2006 Triathlon Spending

I used to work for the company that produces Quicken, the leading personal financial software,  so you think I would have some grasp of my personal financial situation.  But in fact I hardly keep track of where my money goes.   All I know is that 2006 has been really bad for my net worth, due in large part to all the triathlon related spending. 

So I was intrigued by a lengthy thread in the Slowtwitch Forum where numerous triathletes reported spending over $10,000 per year on triathlon related spending.  (Of course I have read that the average triathlete makes more than US$100,000 year so they can afford to spend far more than I can)

Some of my fellow triathletes seem to spend significantly more money on the sport than I can afford to and I decided to roughly calculate and categorize my 2006 triathlon spending using the reported categories  from Slowtwitch:

1. Coaching -  Jay $0.  Average for people with coach - $500
What???  I am supposed to pay for a coach?  Yeah, well it would be very nice to have the attention, but for any questions I am content to ask my expert teammates like Keren or Steve and Michael, or rely on the Gale Berhnardt and Joe Frey websites


2. Personal trainers / massage therapy - Jay $ 0    Average - $200
Ha-ha-ha-ha.   Another absurd indulgence.   Americans are becoming too rich and stratified.  People really need not be spending so much for unnecessary luxuries like some Pharaoh and his harem


3. Bike and Swim Equipment - Jay $400     Average $3,500
In 2006 I acquired bike cleats and pedals $190, bento box bike pack $30, swim goggles $25,  bike tubes $10, wheel repair $100, Other $35  
I have almost no possessions anyway (of any sort).   I live in a serviced apartment and all my worldly goods can fit in a small car (not that I even own a car).  I certainly don't spend much on bike equipment.  In fact, I don't know where some of the bike stuff I do own is - presumably some cardboard box somewhere.


4. Running Shoes -  Jay $125     Average $350
In 2006 and late 2005 I acquired two free pair of Asics, a pair of Nikes at employee prices and a pair of full-priced Sauconies, so despite the enormous mountain of running shoes in my closet, my running shoe spending has been low.


5. Apparel -  Jay $75     Average $400
I am supposed to BUY triathlon apparel??   I expect to just receive it at races, like the nice Saucony long-sleeve top we received at the Inagi Ekiden, the gloves from Jim Weissman, the sunglasses from Fabrizio, the zillion t-shirts I have accumulated over the years.  Socks and shorts are customary Christmas gifts.   I wear the same few clothes over and over and over anyway - whatever is on the top of my plastic bin of athletic wear.  The only things I have bought recently are bike booties and shorts.


6. Bike (amortized) -  Jay $250     Average $1500

I buy a relatively inexpensive $1,000 bike and keep it 4 years.   Other triathletes seem to be buying $3,000 - 5,000 bikes every other year.


7. Gel, Power Bars -  Jay $300     Average $300
I have heard this is an expensive source of nutrition.  But actually any source of nutrition in Japan is expensive, so I don't believe this is too much of indulgence.  Would spend almost as much on apples or carrots in Japan.   Thanks goodness my friend Martin Murphy ordered a huge shipment of vanilla creme Gel from the US.


8. Health Club / Masters Swim Fee -  Jay $480    Average $400
OK, I know for people in Tokyo, membership in the notoriously upscale Roppongi Hills Spa must sound wildly hedonistic.  But this most of the membership fee is actually built into my basic monthly consulting retainer and so the incremental costs are cheaper than travelling to a public swimming pool across town.


9. Triathlon /running event entry fees: Jay $1,175    Average $1,000
Wow, these entry fees are expensive (and it is not like the proceeds in the case of triathlons go to charity...)  This figure includes triathlons like NZ, Goto, Sado, and running events like Angkor Wat, Edogwara, and a few other small running events.  Sado was the most egregious - US$250 for a half-ironman.  Totally worth every yen though. 


10. Triathlon-related Travel:  Jay - $4,000     Average  $2,000
Hmmmm.  Well I really like to travel, and I used frequent flier miles to get to Nagasaki and stayed in budget accommodations.  Still Tokyo is an expensive place to travel from.  The long weekend train/boat trip to nearby Sado Island ($750) cost almost as much as the week in Cambodia ($900).  The US triathletes report to travelling to events and staying in their huge recreational vehicles, so their incremental trip costs are low, but their fixed overhead is huge.


11. Triathlon-related Coffee Consumption  Jay - $100  Average - $0
(another separate Quicken category)
 

Angkor Wat Half-Marathon

After having such a grand time travelling to the Fukuoka Half-Marathon in Kyushu last autumn, we searched for other interesting destinations where a half-marathon could be the impetus for group trip to some fascinating destination. A marathon is too exhausting (before and after the run), a 10k is too short for me to justify epic travel, and triathlons require so much logistics and eliminate 90% of my teammates. I found several websites such as RW's race index which suggested half-marathons in Lisbon, Sweden, Italy and Taiwan (all of which I hope to do someday). But the most intriguing event was the Angkor Wat Half-Marathon, a destination I had long hoped to visit, and one that is near the same time zone and award travel routes from Tokyo.

Alas the Angkor Wat Half-Marathon is held in mid-December, and with Christmas, Japanese bonenkai events, my REIT IPO work, Phuket Triathlon, my US trip, and other end of year activities I did not think myself or any other teammates would actually be able to schedule such an international journey. However I spoke to Arnaud from the Singapore MR25 team for whom the Angkor Wat Half-Marathon is a required annual pilgrimage, and Arnaud became a passionate evangelist for the event among the Nambanners, encouraging a dozen members of the team to travel to Cambodia. As is my custom, I waited until the last second to commit, but managed to book a last-minute convoluted travel itinerary.

So on December 15th I delightedly greet 16 other Namban and MR25 runners as we converged at Casa Angkor Hotel from different flights from Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Vietnam. Casa Angkor Hotel is charming and comfortable enough, especially at only $45 per night. For the next for days we feast on superb Khmer curries and fish amok at atmospheric restaurants and hang out at the cafes of pubstreet and sleek FCC. One of the pleasures I find in Southeast Asia is travel by the open tuks-tuks. Siem Reap's streets are still mostly streaming along with bicycles and pedestrians and dogs rather than completely clogged with cars and trucks. Granted the streets are often strewn with garbage, but the colonial architecture, parks, tree-lined and upscale new hotels are impressive. For a country with average per capita income of $200/month and the huge wealth disparity between the visitors and locals, the people of Siem Reap strike me as friendly and unaggressive relative to other developing countries I have recently visited.

Cambodia seems to be priced like a 100-yen shop (one-dollar store) - everything for foreigners costs $1 - tuk-tuk rides of widely varying distance, french bakery items, coffee, cards, papers, books, beer, trinkets, internet usage, etc. I neglect to learn the rule that foreigners are supposed to use US dollars and I convert some Japanese yen at the airport into 200,000 Cambodian rial, and immediately found how wildly inconvenient it is to use the local currency. Fortunately I find a New Zealand Bank ATM machine along a dusty street which rather remarkably spit out a stack of US $20 bills.

THE RUN

I had yet to visit the Angkor Wat site prior to arriving for the race in the pre-dawn darkness on Sunday morning. So it was a transcendent experience watching the sun rise over the temple complex as we warmed up. So transcendent that I only realized I left my chip in the van as officials announced that there were 3 minutes to the starting gun. So after a frantic dash to get the chip, I had a bit of adrenaline going at the start and went out in 3:45, a pace which proved too ambitious. In fact I was already fading by the U-turn at 4-kilometers, dropping to 4-minute pace. I probably would have felt OK about this but for the fact the Singapore mates running the opposite direction (Arnaud, Mika, Chuck..) all yelled out comments like "C'mon Jay get up there" "What is the matter with you Jay" "Lets get going Jay - you are supposed to be with the leaders". Wow, I thought America was a competitive place. Apparently Singapore is a much more demanding environment than the relaxed and accepting Namban Rengo culture.

From 7k to the finish I found myself beside a Cambodian teenager running the most erratic pace. We talked and encouraged each other though my command of Khmer language is limited. I managed to look around and admire the course even though I was working pretty hard to maintain 4-minute pace.

PHNOM PENH

I felt compelled to see more of Cambodia than just the heavily-visited town of Siem Reap. so after 4 days in Siem Reap I return home via a boat trip to the capital, Phnom Penh. I found the journey to Phnom Penh the most vivid part of the trip though it is not really designed for lazy travellers like me accustomed to business travel and the polite efficiency of Japan (most grown-up travelers simply fly in and out of Siem Reap and the true backpackers travel by the $4 bus). The biggest challenge is getting off the tuk-tuk and getting on the boat in Siem Reap. I was completely set upon by villagers hawking food for the boat trip, trying to carry my bag for a tip, hook me up with a driver in Phom Penh, etc (this can be a bit threatening when you are by yourself and struggling in the mud with one of those rolling flight attendant bags). I imagine the bus to Bangkok would have been really exhausting. Since the clientele is poorer, maybe there are less vultures? or maybe I would stand out as the best target?

Anyway after that the boat is a relatively comfortable, upscale backpacker experience The boat crosses the remarkably vast Tongle Lake and its colorful floating villages, and then down the Tongle RIver where you get a glimpse of the lifestyle of rural Cambodia. I found it pleasant to alternate between the inside seats and sitting on the deck in the sunshine. At one point the boat engine stopped and we drifted into a mud flats where we surrounded by curious peasant farmers. Five minutes pass, ten minutes pass, and I was growing concerned, but then somehow the crew got us going again. I was braced for Phnom Penh to be such a squalid, threatening, hell-hole, that I was pleasantly surprised when the area fronting the Mekong River turned out to be relatively clean and functioning (even upscale in places). In fact it was comfortable enough to sit outside at the numerous charming sidewalk cafes that line the riverfront -- the merchants seem to pay to keep the wall of beggars a certain distance away -- but once I stood up and start walking down the sidewalk I got besieged again. I did not get the impression there is much to see though beyond the riverfront area and the Killing Field Museum - but then I was not terribly adventurous. Unlike Bangkok there is much less motorized traffic and the air (at least this week) was crystal clear.

After the fun and camaraderie of Angkor Wat, talk turns to the next run-as-an-excuse-to-travel and several people start preparing for (I am not kidding) the Gobi Desert Half-Marathon

Honolulu

I stopover in Hawaii where I lived for 3 years back in the mid 1990s.  People are aghast that I did not become a triathlete during my years in Hawaii.  Instead I just worked a lot and occasionally jogged and grew terribly out-of-shape.

I try to make up for this during my few days in Hawaii by extensively swimming and running along Kailua Beach on the Windward side of Oahu.  Kailua Beach is a 4.5 kilometer stretch of white sand and turquoise water ideal for open water swims and beach runs. 

My schedule allows me to watch much of the Honolulu Marathon before hurrying off to the airport.  17,000 of the 29,000 field is composed of Japanese who are attracted by the idea of a Hawaii vacation, the scenic course, and the lack of opportunities in Japan to run marathons without harsh finishing time restrictions. Apparently many, many more runners would come but for the lack of seat capacity on the flights between Japan and Honolulu.  The 17,000 runners from Japan create a reported $100 million economic benefit to Oahu, so the limited casual marathon opportunities in Japan are a windfall for Hawaii.

I cheer on a seemingly endless stream of remarkably festive, smiling runners (at least during the first half of the race).   I jump in with Taro Agui who is pacing his Harrier team to a 6-hour finish.  This time may not sound impressive to some of the more elitist readers of this blog, but it is faster than more than half the finishers.    I see my archrival from Ome, Mike Taratko who finishes 541st in 3:29:55.

Perhaps what amazes me most is that the runners from Japan are doing the race on almost zero sleep.  The marathon starts at 5am in Honolulu which is midnight in Japan.  Talk about jet lag.  I have been pondering various triathlons in the US, but  early to mid-morning is the worst time for me to overcome the 5-11 hour time zone difference.  Several of my Tokyo teammates have complained of feeling tired at the start of North American marathons (Anthony in Portland, Carol in NYC), and I am convinced jet lag is a big factor.   Moreover, most of the Japan participants at Honolulu arrive on package tour red-eye flights on Friday morning meaning they are lucky to get one real night of sleep in the 72 hours leading up to the race.  My friend Akiba-san, in the fashion of the typical Japanese salaryman, had been working 20-hour days in the week leading up to the trip, so he was in a sleep deficit even before getting on the flight to Honolulu.   Amazingly he was able to finish in 5 hours. 

The other Honolulu Marathon challenge is that after the sun begins to rise at 6:30am it becomes hotter and hotter, and the participants who take 9 hours to finish find themselves being cooked in midday heat.   But Sunday is such a cool morning that I am inclined to jump in the race myself. 

Would I do this event next year?  The Naha Marathon in Okinawa which is a week earlier provides a tropical vacation and avoids the jetlag and much of the heat (teammate Hideo reports average race temperatures in Naha of only 20 degrees).   Moreover Okinawa is more affordable - the price of everything in Hawaii has risen far beyond my meager budget with many accommodations costing 4 times the local rates I payed a decade ago.

Autumn 2006: Long hilly runs series

I do not have an elaborate or scientific or difficult marathon training program filled with self-sacrifice. My philosophy now is to find one interesting and enjoyable course each week for the crucial weekly long run.

Fortunately my desire for interesting new runs dovetails with the general expert advice that weekly long run on varied terrain is a key building block in the weeks from 15 weeks to 5 weeks prior to the marathon. Here is Joe Friel in Fast Marathoner:

1. Long runs. Before you can train for speed you've got to first be able to go the distance. I call a "long run" for the marathon one that is two-and-a-half to three hours in duration. Start from your longest run now and add 15 to 20 minutes each time you do one of these. The pace is slow – at least two minutes per mile slower than your 10k pace. 2. Hilly run. Besides the long run, this is the most valuable workout you can do early in the season. These will give you not only strength for hills on the marathon course, but also a more powerful stride.

Here is a list to date of my effort to find various long runs:

Week 1 (Oct 20) The Akasaka Yasukuni Palace Loop - 14k
Painful slog with Darshaun. It is clear from this run that I have a long way to go. 14k isn't really a long run, but it seems extremely long on this day.

Week 2 (Oct 28) The Tamagawa River stroll - 18k
Flat run along the river with Paddy, Juergen, Chris and Ingle. At least socializing takes my mind off the fact that I am out of shape.

Week 3 (Nov 4) The Takao to Fujino Mountain Climb - 24k
Grueling hill run with Terry, Keren, Motozo, Rie, Chika. This scenic point-to-point course starts with 4-5k of town running out of Takao, followed by switchbacks up to the Takao trail. The final section from Jimba Mountain to the small village of Fujino is great running. In Fujino, Keren Motozo and I inhale a lunch of ramen noodles in less than 4-minutes and catch the train back to Tokyo for yoga.

Week 4 (Nov 10) The Higashi Agano Trail Run - 20k
Steep climb and run along ridge in Saitama. Some of the steep sections are unrunnable, but it is enjoyable to explore an interesting new point-to-point course situated an hour out of central Tokyo.

Week 5 (Nov 18) The Kamakura Trail & Beach Run - 24k
My friend Martin who works for the State Department in Afghanistan visits Tokyo for a week and wishes to run the Kamakura loop course. This works perfectly with 17 Nambanners joining us for a long run. The first 12k is on hilly trails and the last half of the course follows the waterfront (2:45 minutes of running, 3:30 of total time with stops for pictures, temples, views, bathroom breaks etc).

Week 6 (Nov 25) The Ome Trail Run - 25k
Perfect blue skies and spectacular autumn leaves as Chris, Fabrizio, Gary and I cover the hilly trails of Ome, 90-minutes from Roppongi (2:40 minutes)

So apparently I need to break out all the Yellow Tail shiraz that has been sitting on my shelf. The latest research shows that drinking red wine will help my marathon time, or at least increase my endurance on a treadmill if consumed in massive amounts (see below). I always wondered about my teammate's Colin and Bob's success in endurance events -- I assumed it was due to training, but now I realize it is the red wine:




November 17, 2006

Red Wine Ingredient Increases Endurance, Study Shows

By NICHOLAS WADE

A drug already shown to reverse the effects of obesity in mice and make them live longer has now been shown to increase their endurance as well.

An ordinary laboratory mouse will run one kilometer on a treadmill before collapsing from exhaustion. But mice given resveratrol, a minor component of red wine and other foods, run twice as far. They also have energy-charged muscles and a reduced heart rate, just as trained athletes do, according to an article published online in Cell by Johan Auwerx and colleagues at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France.

"Resveratrol makes you look like a trained athlete without the training," Dr. Auwerx (pronounced OH-wer-ix) said in an interview.

He and his colleagues said the same mechanism seemed likely to operate in humans, based on analysis in a group of Finnish subjects of the gene that is influenced by the drug.

Their rationale for testing resveratrol was evidence obtained three years ago that it could initiate a genetic mechanism known to protect mice against the degenerative diseases of aging and prolong their life spans by 30 percent.

A drug that prolongs life, averts degenerative disease and makes one into a champion athlete sounds almost too good to be true, especially if all or even some of its properties should turn out to apply to people.

Dr. Christoph Westphal, Sirtris's chief executive, replied to this objection with a question, "Is it too good to be true that when you are young you get no disease?"

Dr. Westphal said he believed that the activation of sirtuins was what kept the body healthy in youth, but that these enzymes became less powerful with age. This is the process that is reversed by resveratrol and, he hopes, by the more powerful sirtuin activator drugs that his company has developed, though many years of clinical trials will be needed to prove they work and are safe.

The buzz over sirtuin activators has infected scientists who do research on the aging process, several of whom are already taking resveratrol. Dr. Sinclair has been swallowing resveratrol capsules for three years and has said his parents and half the members of his laboratory do the same. So does Dr. Tomas Prolla at the University of Wisconsin, who said, "The fact that investigators in the field are taking it is a good sign there is something there."

But many others, including Dr. Leonard Guarente of M.I.T., whose 15-year study of sirtuins has laid the basis for the field, say it is premature to take the drug.

Tokyo Elite Marathon Cutoff Bus

Four of my teammates are among the several hundred women to qualify for the prestigious Tokyo Ladies Marathon yesterday, and I joined the throngs lining the course to cheer them on. Japan is a rabid marathon culture and thousands of people stand for hours in freezing rain to see the runners pass by twice on the out-and-back course. Tokyo weather is usually quite benign in November, and the cold temperatures come as a shock after the mild autumn. While us spectators are mildly uncomfortable, the marathon runners endure steadily increasing rain and then a terribly unkind headwind and uphill climb on the return stretch.

I watch the marathon at the 30k mark and most all of the runners faces are contorted with pain as they stare ahead toward the heartbreak hill. But the really frightening thing is looming behind them. The bitterly cruel fact of this elite marathon is that if the runners fail to maintain a fast 3:30:00 finishing time pace through various cutoff points, the race officials will pull them off the course and deposit them on the sweeper buses trailing the field. After months of training and 40-kilometers of pain, they could be pulled off the course and denied the chance to finish the event! Runner after runner passes me each looking more nervous. Three of my Namban teammates pass safely, though Mika K does not have a large cushion over the cutoff time. Then in the distance I see them. It is an ominous sight, worse than any horror movie, the buses bearing down with their lights piercing the rain drops.

An advance official in a car tries to persuade the last woman to stop running and get on the bus, but she gamely presses on despite the apparent futility of beating the time at the next cutoff mark.

Then I watch the bus pass. The bus is filled with wet and exhausted and disheveled runners swaddled in huge blankets. They are paraded slowly along the race course, all of them staring downward, eyes averted from the crowd, looking far more sad and forlorn than if they were a group of prisoners being taken away to a guillotine to be executed.

I am outraged and ready to organize a loud protest of this horribly merciless practice of cutting runners off, but then when I ask the participants what they think of this heartless standard, they shrug it off an integral aspect of the event. It is the tough standard that make it a truly "elite" event wherever finisher can stand shoulder to shoulder with the Olympic Gold medal winner. The harsh cutoff makes the accomplishment of finishing that much sweeter.

Everything You Know About Marathons Is Wrong

I just found out that everything I know about marathons is wrong.  According to the article (pasted below) a study of data from several decades of marathons showed -

1.  The slowing effect of heat is not as great as people think.  A runner who finished in 3-hours on a 41-degrees F (5 degrees C) day, would be slowed by 12% to 3 hours and 21 minutes in 77-degree (25 degrees C) weather.   Wow - that is a huge difference to me - the difference between a good and bad marathon.   Then it stands to reason that if I add in the effect of running in humid conditions versus the dry conditions in the US, the effect of heat will be greater.  Moreover, I am convinced that I am "atsugari" (heat has a greater weakening effect on me than the average person).  So I am more convinced than ever that I should seek out cool weather triathlons and marathons.  And avoid the packs of runners generating all that heat.  And be happy when the race day is sunny. 

2. Cramping is caused by dehydration and lack of salt  - I guess I might as well throw out those salt tablets.  The cramps during the Sado Triathlon run brought me to a stop.   When I was in a catatonic state at the end of Sado they dragged me off to a big salt bath by the medical tent.  I guess this was not the optimal solution.  Hmmm.  The salt baths felt pretty good..

NY Times

Everything You Know About Marathons Is Wrong

By GINA KOLATA

Most runners have heard the marathon lore: Your time will be best if the weather on race day is about 55 degrees and overcast, or even drizzly. And avoid dehydration at all costs, because it will cause your muscles to cramp and you could collapse at the finish line.

But none of that is true, researchers said at a recent marathon medicine and science conference in Chicago.

The weather theory "needs adjusting," said Scott J. Montain, a research physiologist at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Mass.

"Most of what we know comes from the lay literature," he said.

Thousands of runners are no doubt monitoring the weather forecast for Sunday, when the New York City Marathon makes its annual tour of the five boroughs. (As of yesterday, it looked promising, with temperatures expected to be in the upper 40's and partially cloudy skies.) But the weather nostrums for marathoning that are cited so authoritatively in journal articles and textbooks are not always borne out in legitimate science. Montain and his colleagues set out to conduct a proper study.

They gathered data from 28 years of the New York City Marathon, 35 years of the Boston Marathon and 23 years of the marathons in Hartford, Vancouver, Duluth, Minn., and Richmond, Va. The routes for those marathons have barely changed over the years, and each had a large field — more than 10,000 runners. The investigators looked at the average times for the top three men and women, and at the times for the runners who placed 25th, 50th, 100th and 300th.

Elite runners ran fastest in the coldest conditions — 41 to 50 degrees. But the slowing effect with heat was not as great as had been previously reported. For every five-degree increase in temperature, times slowed by 0.4 percent.

Warmer weather had a greater effect on slower runners. On a 77-degree day, an elite runner would be about 5 percent slower than on a 41-degree day. But a runner who finished in three hours on a 41-degree day would be slowed by about 12 percent on a 77-degree day, finishing in 3 hours 21 minutes.

One reason, Montain said, could be that slower runners spend more time on the course, and the temperature generally rises through the day. Or it could be because slower runners tend to run with a larger pack. A tightly clustered group of runners generates heat and blocks it from dissipating.

Montain and his colleagues also looked at whether marathon times were better under sunny or overcast skies. Only 13 percent of records were set on cool and cloudy days.

"It is more likely that a record will be set when it is sunny or when there are scattered clouds," Montain said. He is not sure why that is; perhaps sunny conditions put runners in a better mood, he suggested.

Then there is the issue of cramping, that often excruciating, spasmodic, involuntary contraction of muscles that can occur during or, more often, just after a marathon. It almost always involves the muscles that were used to run — the hamstrings or calf muscles, for example. And it can last a minute or two — or much longer.

Conventional wisdom says cramps are caused by dehydration and that the solution is to consume salt and drink more fluids. Not true, says Martin P. Schwellnus, a professor of sports medicine at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

At the conference in Chicago last month, he reported that he could find no relationship between dehydration and cramping. He has studied cyclists, marathoners and triathletes, measuring levels of electrolytes and body-weight changes, both of which are indicators of dehydration. Those who cramped were no different from those who did not.

Two other studies looked at how much weight ultramarathon runners and triathletes lost during races — a measure of fluid loss and a direct indicator of dehydration. Those who cramped lost no more weight than those who did not. If anything, Schwellnus said, those who did not have cramps were slightly more dehydrated.

The cause of cramps, Schwellnus believes, is an alteration in the electrical signals going to exhausted muscles so that the balance between those signals activating muscles and those inhibiting them is distorted. One way to protect yourself is with proper marathon training and proper pacing. "Racing at too high of an intensity is one of the single most important risk factors," Schwellnus said.

When muscles cramp, there is a simple and effective treatment: stop running and stretch that muscle. And, Schwellnus said, realize that the cramping will soon stop.

"Almost no matter what you do, if you stop the activity, the muscle will come back to normal," he said.

Beyond the finish line of every marathon are runners who feel dizzy, and some of them collapse. It is not as common as muscle cramps, but the condition can afflict up to about 5 percent of marathon runners, said Michael N. Sawka, head of the thermal and mountain medicine division at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine. He wondered whether the cause could be dehydration, a commonly evoked mechanism.

Sawka looked at published studies. One compared 45 athletes who collapsed after an ultramarathon to 65 who completed the race and did not collapse. There were no obvious differences between the two groups: their body temperatures were the same (dehydration makes the temperature rise), as were their electrolyte levels. But those who collapsed were pushing themselves as hard as they could, were at or close to their personal records, or were medal winners in the race. Perhaps, Sawka said, "that final effort might contribute to collapse."

The actual cause, though, does not appear to be dehydration, Sawka said. Instead, it is a pooling of blood in the lower legs and feet when vigorous exercise suddenly stops and the heart rate slows markedly.

Timothy Noakes, a professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town, said he had stopped giving intravenous fluids to collapsed runners.

"We completely changed the way we treat patients," Noakes said. "All we do is have them lie down and put their feet higher than their head."

Postmarathon collapse, Noakes added, "is a benign condition."

"Just lift their legs and you will help the majority of patients," he said. "That's all you need to do to make most people recover very, very quickly. You can infuse as much fluid as you want, and you will not get the same response."

 

Tokyo Marathon in 14 weeks

My autumn 2006 objective is to stop the downward spiral of my running career.  The triathlon training is not carrying me.  A week ago Wednesday I struggled to maintain 3:25 pace for the monthly 6 x1000 interval training.   My teammates were shocked and dismayed.   "Jay, you are a shell of your former self" they all said. 

I entered the Tokyo Marathon on February 18, so I need to regain at least some minimum level of fitness.

Presumably my struggles are a result of the low mileage I mentioned in my Edogawa Report Blog.  Since the second week of October I have begun to pickup my training a bit.  Here is my weekly mileage (in kilometers) since the Sado Triathlon:

Sept  4-9        17
Sept 10-16     18
Sept 17-23     33
Sept 24-30     18
Oct  1 - 7       14
Oct  8 -14      35
Oct 15-21      38
Oct 22-28      43
Oct 29-4        49
Nov 5-11        43

Edogawa 10k

Yesterday's Edogawa 10k served as a wake-up call for me. It is apparent now that running two days per week is not adequate training to maintain my competitive racing level. For the past 3-4 months I have been doing a solid interval running workout every Wednesday night, but the rest of the week I am focused on swimming, cycling, and yoga. I assumed other run workouts will somehow materialize, but invariably what has happened is that each week I only end up squeezing in one additional garbage run - usually 8-9k around the Palace with a friend at a slow pace (see blog entry from October 7).


Prior to yesterday's 10k I knew I was in trouble (my Wednesday track times have been slipping by 5-10 seconds per kilometer). I ran the first kilometer of Sunday's race at 3:45, then attempted to increase the speed a bit. I hit the halfway mark at 18:27 at which point I could feel myself weakening. Somehow I managed to maintain a 3:40 pace for the next few kilometers.


The real shock came at the 9k mark when the course takes a U-turn and suddenly I spotted Namban teammate Bob Poulson right behind me. You have to realize that Bob is old -- very, very old. I am not even sure how old Bob is - when I joined the club I was told that Bob had originally come to Japan on Admiral Perry's Black Ships which would make him well over 100 years old.. Later I was told that Bob came to Japan even earlier than that -- walking across to Japan from Siberia during the last Ice Age when the oceans had retreated. These stories may be exaggerated, but in any case, Bob is much older than me.

So of course I pushed my legs as best I could over the last kilometer in order to stay ahead of the ancient one, and I managed to finish in 37:09 (slower than my half-marathon pace a year ago).

Now after all this seemingly negative talk, I should point out that I perceive the glass as being more than half full. The Edogawa event was a fine day. 25 teammates participated, 7 of them achieving personal bests. Everyone seemed to have a good time and I was glad to have played a small role in promoting the event. Moreover I managed to finish 8th in my age division and it was gratifying that I could be in the award ceremony at all given my low mileage training. (The Edogawa 10k award ceremony is a remarkable event in itself with the pageantry and ritual one would expect at the crowning of a new Roman Catholic Pope or Olympic opening ceremony).


Clearly cross-training allows me to maintain overall fitness. I know from past experience if I had not been doing the swimming and biking these past few months (or did nothing for more than 3 weeks) I would have been light years farther back.

Visit to Nike World HQ

I like to consider myself a loyal and devoted Asics person. But yesterday I found myself at Death Star, the Nike World Campus in Beaverton Oregon.

Years ago, when I was growing up in nearby Seattle and Nike was a small renegade company I was the company's biggest fan, and wore the original Pegasus, Equator, Cortez, and Waffle racer. But over the years the company's emphasis on marketing over product development, the ubiquity of the produce (12 million shoes sold last year in Japan alone), and the general arrogance of the Nike brand image has turned me anti-Nike. Especially after learning how Nike got its start by stealing Asic's product design, patenting the design in the US, and then turning around and filing a lawsuit against Asics.

Despite these strong feelings, I am willing to sell out on my beliefs at a cheap price -- 50% employee discount on the new Nike Air Equalon at the Nike Employee Store.

I must admit the Equalon's feel pretty good. I went for a test run around the Nike campus. The Nike campus is a pretty competitive corporate jogging trail. I was running at a reasonably good pace, but two female MBA-type marketing staff overtook me by the Alberto Salazar building.

The Nike workplace is amazing with a soft woodchip running trail meandering around the 178 acre site. The campus has an artificial lake at its center surrounded by buildings named after Nike athletes like Lance Armstrong, Mia Hamm etc. At the entrance is a museum with Steve Prefontaine's old shoes and jersey.

Of course I hope to get Ascis (or if necessary Saucony or Adidas) for my next racing flats.

Minimalist Run Training - Running two days per week

Thousands of runners (mostly lazy Americans) have completed a marathon based on a training regime of only three runs per week.   The serious runners in my Tokyo running team are appalled to hear of such half-hearted devotion to the sport.

As I start preparing for the fall race campaign I am doing even less than that.  Over the past several months my run training is down to only TWO workouts per week. 

Here is my recent weekly mileage (in kilometers, not miles)

July 30 - 8/5   - 26
Aug 6 -12      -  31
Aug 13-19     -  34
Aug 20-26     -  29   
Aug 27 -9/2   -  19    (Sado taper)
Sept 3-9       -   37   (Sado Triathlon)
Sept 10-16   -   17
Sept 17-23   -   28
Sept 24-30   -   18

Granted each week I am also doing 2-3 one-hour swim sessions and 1-3 bike rides/spin sessions.  This cross-training has so far allowed me to maintain a reasonably competitive level of speed and endurance . 

 

However as I struggled to run 6 x 1000 meters on Wednesday at a 3:22 average, I begun to wonder if the limited running is starting to have a negative impact on me.   
 

My top ten list of Japan running events

Here is quick ranking of my favorite running races in Japan. The reality is that I have only participated in perhaps 20-25 of the hundreds of events in Japan, so maybe the point I am trying to make is my need to get out more. This list is only composed of 5k to half-marathon distances (no ekidens, marathons or triathlons). Since all Japanese races are efficiently organized, race organization is less of a factor. Unique, scenic courses are the key criteria in this list:


1. Ohyama Tozan -
Upside - Unique challenging all uphill course. Great backpack given to all finishers. Convenient. Scenic. Crowd support.
Downside - All uphill. Finish is painful.





2. Kyoto Half-Marathon -
Upside - Its Kyoto - scenic course and good excuse for Shinkansen trip. Flat and fast.
Downside - Crowded. Expensive. Must register 4 months before race.



3. Montrail Ome 30k Trail Run -
Upside - Scenic forest trail. Cool Shinto ceremony in middle of race. Day of race entry Hilly.
Downside - Expensive. Hilly.




4. Fukuoka City Half-Marathon -
Upside - Good excuse for trip to Fukuoka. Cool stadium finish.
Downside - Much of course is through industrial area. Wind.




5. Edogawa -
Upside - 15 minutes from Tokyo station. Lots of Nambanners. Elaborate award ceremony. El Torrito.
Downside - Average scenery. U-turns and potential wind. El Torrito.


6. Ohtawara (10k)
Upside - Flat. Fast. Ryokan. Lots of Nambanners. Watching marathon before and after 10k.
Downside - Event held on midweek holiday. Not particularly scenic.


7. TELL Race -
Upside - Lots of prizes. Convenient. Day-of-race registration. Efficient charitable use of entry fee. Bob is in charge. Good t-shirt.
Downside - Just another run around Palace (where I frequently train).


8. Obuse Half-Marathon
Upside - Ryokan after the race. Playing in fountains at finish. Bands along the course.
Downside - Hot and humid. Lots of turns. Expensive and inconvenient from Tokyo.


9. Tachikawa Showa Kinen 10k
Upside - Flat. Fast. Competitive. Reasonably convenient. Race entirely in large, pleasant park.
Downside - Two loop course. Slightly expensive.


10. Fuji-Yoshida
Upside - Barbecue before race. Scenic weekend trip.
Downside - Running after barbecue. Inconvenient. Long downhill run section on pavement.

Off-season triathlon training

Theoretically now my triathlon "season" is over. I was told that with the Sado Island Triathlon behind me, it is time to hibernate and fatten up over the winter. At Oi-futo two weeks ago, my teammate Mary said I looked tired and should get some recovery

But I hate to lose my momentum and training base, and with the end of summer the days are clear and cool, and I want to go outside and bike and run. The seasons here are not like my hometown of Seattle where summer is warm and dry and winter is cold and wet. I am starting to ponder triathlons and running events in the December timeframe (Phuket, Angkor Wat) which sound like great fun. So these past few weeks is really more of a "transition phase".

According to the research my off-season transition phase can be any duration more than 2 weeks. Anything shorter than 2 weeks will not produce the necessary physical and mental regeneration. The transition phase should incorporate the following --
1. Rest - At least 2 days per week
2. Weight training
3. Swim drills
4. Intensity - RPE (rate of perceived exertion) of 3 to 5 (on a scale of 1 to 10).
5. Duration - From 30 to 75 minutes each workout session.

I have had no problem resting 3 days per week. The weight training is a bit harder, since my spa is mostly about soaking in baths rather than pumping iron. I really never do weight training, though I know it is valuable for triathlon training (and long-term health). At least we are doing some focused strength work at Yoga for Athletes.

All my workouts these past three weeks have been low intensity except for the 10x800 Yasso track workout last Wednesday night where Namban teammate Omar pulled me along at 2:40 pace. As far as duration, my swims have dropped down to 35-minute sessions, and my boring indoor bike sessions have been only 55 minutes.

This weekend marks 3 weeks of "transition" and I am starting to plot my "base training".

Run for Africa Race Volunteer

I served as a volunteer "sweeper" Sunday at the 3rd Run for Africa 5k&10k runs -- running behind the last runner and making sure no one is lost and abandoned somewhere out on the run course. I was pleased to be able to again help Taro and his Harriers team and his cause - an orphanage in Zambia.

Over the past two weeks I have received at least a half-dozen announcements of upcoming charity running events here in Tokyo - Terry Fox Run, Tyler Foundation, Run for the Cure, Run for Hunger... While the US endurance event calendar is dominated by charity events, it seems that most Japanese events are sponsored by local government recreation department bureaucrats. The Japanese bureaucrats always do a good job in their diligent and conscientious way, but I think the US charity/corporate sponsor model delivers more for the money and effort. So this sudden proliferation of charity runs strikes me as a good thing.

I have a bit of background in the world of philanthropy having established IRS 501(c)3 non-profits in Nevada and Hawaii, co-founded a micocredit lender in Central America, worked at the Low Income Housing Fund in San Francisco, orchestrated a $3 million Intuit software donation in Southeast Asia, .. I like to think this effort has made some positive difference, but to be honest, my exposure to the non-profit world has left me a bit cynical. I always struggled with feeling that there was too much focus on fundraising and internal politics, and too little donations reached the actual program.


The best events are when the run itself is a meaningful statement. Juergen Wittstock and I helped to launch the Save Mount Takao Run two years ago - an event protesting the construction of a redundant highway through a treasured wilderness area. After paying for marketing, timing devices, postcards, etc. surprisingly little of the money raised went to the environmental group programs. But the very fact that hundreds of people showed up was a statement to the highway authorities. Moreover after the race, the runners wore the Save Takao t-shirt, and the participants all heard the Save Takao message and were able to see and experience the threatened area first-hand.

Also when the cause is personally meaningful, doing a grueling endurance event and raising money provides a sense of empowerment. For example, a few years ago in San Francisco back when people felt helpless in the face of AIDS, pushing themselves through the 500-mile AIDS bicycle ride gave them a sense that they were personally helping to accomplish something for people they care about. So I guess I need to find an event raising money for ulcerative colitis

I am convinced the community here would embrace the "Team in Training" concept. I know several close friends in California who gushed about the life transforming nature of the experience. The Team in Training participants at the Wildflower triathlon had more enthusiasm and camaraderie than even high school kids, singing and crying and rooting each other on. I have pondered how to modify this concept here, but to do it right would require large-investment of full-time staff and corporate sponsors.


So for now I will simply find sponsors and start training for one of the small local charity runs -- like World Run Day or Run for Mika.

The serious runners of Japan are in a frenzy this week over the news that some 75,000-plus individuals have entered into a lottery for the 30,000 spots in next February's Tokyo Marathon.  75,000 is quite a large number given that this is the very first time the event is being held, there has been little  overseas marketing, and several runners I talked with were put off by the US$100 entry fee.   Clearly there is  significant pent-up demand.  Teammates on the Namban Rengo mailing list are asking how to improve their chances of getting one of the coveted spots in the marathon.

According to yesterday's NYTimes article (copied below)   New Yorkers have resorted to extreme measures to  participate in the New York Marathon, including  creating counterfeit race numbers and  buying race numbers online.   NY Marathon race numbers have reportedly been sold on eBay for $450.   In marathon-mad Tokyo, race numbers could conceivably be bid up even higher than that. 

But to a triathlete this is small change.  I considered entering last years Arizona Ironman, but it would have cost me a $500 plus a $2,500 donation to charity.   A spot in the Kona Ironman was purchased for over $30,000 on eBay.   When I registered for California 's Wildflower triathlon, I sat poised at my computer at midnight on the day of registration and managed to get one of the 2,000 spots, all of which sold out within a few hours.

I hope to win one of the treasured spots in February's Tokyo Marathon.  But I don't plan to go to such great lengths to enter the marathon.  26 miles is a lot of punishment.



September 16, 2006

Paying Top Dollar for Punishment, 26 Miles' Worth

By JENNIFER BLECHER

The notion of paying hundreds of dollars for the opportunity to run 26.2 miles may not appeal to most people, but some runners are doing just that because demand for marathons has outstripped the number of spots available in the fields.

More than 100,000 runners are training now for the three major fall marathons — Berlin, Chicago and New York City — and many thousands more are preparing for smaller races throughout the country. But many runners were unable to gain entry into the race of their choice, and some of them will turn to prohibited means of getting into the field, like using counterfeit bibs — the paper numbers runners wear on their shirts — or buying bibs at a premium online.

Race organizers say they are frustrated by this unintended consequence of staging popular events, but there is little they can do. Photocopied or otherwise fabricated bibs are needles in a haystack of tens of thousands of runners.

More than 90,000 people entered a lottery for the 50,000 spots awarded for the New York City Marathon, which will be Nov. 5. Considering that thousands of runners do not make it to race day because of injuries and myriad other reasons, organizers expect the field to be about 36,000.

A 26-year-old woman who did not receive a spot in last year's New York City Marathon said she photocopied her mother's bib in order to run.

The woman, who requested anonymity for fear of being barred from future races, said she had looked at the classified ads on the Web site Craigslist.

She said prices online were too high, and one seller backed out of the deal after having second thoughts. A co-worker suggested something that had worked for him five times — creating a homemade bib.

"I never ended up having any problems," she said.

Neither did her co-worker, who also requested anonymity. With the help of a graphic designer, he altered and copied an official bib to make one for himself and five friends. "He'd turn a 3 into an 8 or a 7 into a 1," he said about the designer. "That way we could all run together without getting caught."

He said he was not concerned about being caught. "They're not checking very hard," he said. "It's not like airport security out there."

Organizers of the New York City and Chicago Marathons agreed that photocopying bibs was a problem, but they said that catching people who did that was not their priority.

"When there's demand, you see creativity," said Carey Pinkowski, director of the Chicago Marathon. "That's just how it is, and there's not much you can do about it."

Of more importance, organizers say, is the growing number of people offering bibs for sale, sometimes at five times or more above cost.

A New York City Marathon bib was offered on eBay last month for $750 with a "buy it now" option of $1,000. It went unsold, but two weeks later another sold for more than $450. Among the marathon bibs for sale on eBay yesterday was one for Chicago with a bid of $162. Most bibs for the New York City Marathon are selling for $100 to $200, but one seller on Craigslist was recently asking $775 for his bib for a man in his racing age group. People placing ads looking for bibs were offering up to $300.

The entry fee for the New York City Marathon is $80 for members of the New York Road Runners Cluband $107 for nonmembers plus a $9 nonrefundable processing fee. The Chicago and Boston Marathons filled their slots in record time. Chicago's fee is $90. Boston, which requires runners to meet a qualifying standard, charges $95 for Americans.

Another woman who was not successful in the lottery for New York posted an ad on Craigslist for a bib so she could run with her friends. She said she was willing to pay as much as $200. "I definitely wouldn't pay what other people are paying on eBay," said the woman, who also requested anonymity because she feared race organizers would bar her from future races.

With few exceptions, marathons prohibit the transfer of bibs because of the medical issues that can arise if an injured runner is misidentified, and because of the desire to preserve what they consider a fair entry system. Many organizers said they were taking steps to curb online sales.

Richard Finn, a spokesman for the New York Road Runners, which organizes the New York City Marathon, said two volunteers monitored Web sites to see if anyone was selling bibs. The directors of the Chicago and Boston Marathons said they also tracked sales online.

According to Mary Wittenberg, the director of the New York City Marathon, about 100 runners were contacted and warned each year for trying to sell numbers. She said 25 people had been contacted this year.

But catching someone may be a difficult proposition. People selling their bibs online usually do not reveal their identity or bib number. And many recreational runners figure they will blend into the crowd of thousands without being detected.

But sometimes runners do better than expected. In the 2001 Vermont City Marathon, in Burlington, the women's second-place finisher, Karine Maltis of Montreal, confessed that she was running under someone else's name. Based on her previous time, Maltis did not think she would come close to first place. Race organizers said she was wearing a counterfeit bib, and she was stripped of her medal and $800 prize money. The woman who sold her the bib number, Johanne Provencher, was barred from the race for life.

The year before, the men's eighth-place finisher, Joe Straub of Chester, N.Y., was caught running under someone else's name. He and the seller were also permanently barred from the race.

Pinkowski acknowledged that it was impossible to catch every swapper. "We require everyone to provide identification when they pick up their bibs, but you're never going to stop it, obviously," he said.

Susan MacTavish Best, a spokeswoman for Craigslist, said in an e-mail message that the company had not been contacted by any marathon organizers, but that it would work with them if the seller had signed a contract not to resell the bib. She noted that the site was also self-policing; users can flag posts they find inappropriate.

Many marathons employ deferment policies that allow runners to drop out of a race and have a guaranteed spot the next year. The New York City Marathon permits runners to do so up to 24 hours before the race. But under no circumstances do those runners receive refunds, which is the problem for many of the runners who resort to selling online.

Dave Dannenberg, 36, who was registered to run in the Marine Corps Marathon in the Washington area, sold his bib on eBay after he injured his ankle. "I just didn't want to waste the money I spent when I registered," he said.

Greg Golightly, 35, injured his foot and is not permitted to transfer the bib he bought for the Twin Cities Marathon.

"It's a tough situation," he said. "You register seven months in advance. It's tough to gauge where you're going to be."

The Marine Corps and the Vermont City Marathons have introduced transfer policies in recent years, whereby the buyer and seller arrange the transfer on their own terms, then a fee is paid to the marathon. The organizers encourage sellers to sell their bibs at cost. The result has been more runners at the starting line on race day.

Increased turnout, however, is not necessarily a good thing for marathon organizers, who account for a certain number of dropouts when determining how many runners they will allow in the field. Compared with New York's 36,000, about 34,000 ran in Chicago last year.

"That's a number we feel comfortable with," Pinkowski said. He said he had no desire to make the field bigger. Wittenberg and Jack Fleming, the spokesman for the Boston Marathon, also said they were not considering transfer policies.

The sheer number of entries also makes transfer policies unattractive. Preparing the packets that runners receive upon registration can be daunting. "It's a logistical challenge for us, transferring the bibs and the chips," Pinkowski said, referring to the computerized timing devices that runners wear on their shoes and which enable race organizers to identify them.

Meanwhile, the online marketplace for marathon bibs may continue to expand, even though runners competing under someone else's name are not recognized in the official results.

"I would think that would be a hollow victory," Pinkowski said.

.

Sado Astroman II

Since my triumphant Sado experience I have been pondering how Sunday's time compares to my two previous half-ironman distance triathlons. With triathlons one is comparing apples and oranges, but it certainly appears that I have improved in all 3 areas:


Sado Astroman (September 2006)
2k swim 41:32
105k bike 3:28:43
20k run 1:28:49
Total time 5:39:04



New Zealand IM (March 2006)
3.8k swim cancelled
90k bike 3:14:34:
21.1k run 1:37:44

Wildflower California (May 2002)
1.9k swim 47:29
90k bike 3:29:00
21.1k run 1:58:19
Total time 6:14:48

Key elements -
1. Heat - I am still obsessed over this factor. Would our times have been faster if it was 10 degrees C lower? I have to think so - at least a little bit for Adam York and I. In any case it certainly would have been more pleasant run if it was cooler.

2. Wind: The wind seemed to be very much in our favor on Sunday with a bit of a tailwind on the coast. Usually we finish a triathlon and whine and moan about how the wind was always blowing against you (in seemingly every direction). I can't be confident of having such favorable wind in future events. In comparing to my New Zealand time I have to factor in how the wind was a huge negative factor.

3. Elevation: One big hill on last third of bike certainly slowed us down. My rough bike spits
First 35k - 1 hour
Second 35k - 1 hour
Final 35k - 1:26 hours
The final 10k included some tight streets and I switched to lighter gear to prepare legs for run.

4. Training - I seemed to have enough endurance for the five hour Sado event, in spite of uneven training. Some of the residual benefit of last Spring's training must have lasted until Sunday. I didn't do many brick workouts and longer runs over the summer. Perhaps that would have helped a bit on Sunday.

5. Fatigue from bike on the run - Compared to running a 3:32 marathon at Ironman Japan (and walking every 5 minutes), running a 1:28:49 seems a bit weaker, and my relative competitive position on the run was worse at Sado. Still it seems apparent that pushing harder on the bike is well worth any dropoff on the run time.

6. Eating - More seems to be better. My slow Wildflower time may have largely been lack of fuel. I struggled to eat on Sunday, but I think the big breakfast, and the 3 gels, 2 bananas, and the powerbar were just enough to get me through Sado.

7. Effort - Based on my collapse at the end, I feel that "I left it all out there" as had been my plan. Of course it could be that I was just being a wimp at the end.

Sado Astroman Triathlon

The Sado Astroman Triathlon this past Sunday was great fun, and arguably my best triathlon performance to date. My swim and bike were strong and I manged to hang on and survive the run. I finished in 5:39:04 which was good for 58th out of 522 men, and 8th out of 102 in my age group.

The rather odd Astroman tagline warned us that "it will be the longest day of your life" and sure enough at 3:50am on race morning the ancient proprietress at our creaky ryokan walked all the way into our room, stood above us and in a high-pitched chirp announced "Asa gohan dekimashita....doozooo." Keren, David and I grumbled and tried to go back to sleep, but soon we found ourself in the dining area eating another huge meal of fish, vegetables and rice - not my typical breakfast of cereal and yogurt and fruit, but I wasn't complaining. I wasn"t complaining because compared to poor Keren, my stomach was doing fine. Keren had been suffering with a horrendous digestive problems from his trip in India. I reassured him that once the gun goes off he will be fine, but given the way he sounded in the bathroom I really had to secretly agree with him that he was doomed.

Swim
It was a gorgeous morning and the water was calm and clear and inviting.
In the past I have hung at the back when the race starts to avoid the frenzied crowd. But I hoped to stay near Dave, who in turn hoped to stay near Keren, who in turn hoped to stay close to Adam, so when the gun went off and Adam went out fast, we all went out fast. Moreover we have spent time this summer practicing "porpoising" (repeatedly diving forward in shallow water) and it proved so successful that by the time we got to deeper water and I started to crawl stroke I was toward the front of some 500+ swimmers. Problem was that soon a pack of 100 swimmers literally swam over me. The first half of the swim was pretty rough, but I managed to get in a decent rhythm on the return stretch and when I got out of the water my time of 41:32 was close to my most optimistic goal, and certainly my best triathlon swim ever.

Bike
The 105-kilometer bike route around the southern section of Sado was spectacular. First we rode through rice fields in the middle of the island, then we began a clockwise loop around the mountain hugging the rocky coastline. I worked on staying with cyclists who passed me and averaged over 35-kilometers per hour along the rolling hills, a much faster pace than what I rode at Ironman Japan in May. The drafting rule at Sado Astroman is less strict than at Ironman races and I tried to maintain a few bike lengths behind any cyclist in front of mine but always have someone within 10-20 meters to at least psychologically pull me along.
I was startled to pass Keren at around the halfway mark, not recognizing him until he shouted my name. Obviously Keren's stomach problems were taking a toll on him, but triathlon is a merciless sport, and I continued to chase the pack I had been riding with.
Around 80-kilometers the course took us up a long hill which slowed my pace, but allowed me get up out of my saddle and to pass other cyclists. The final downhill section of the course was exhilarating - I sang at the top of my lungs as we raced back down along the coastline into town.

Run
Of course then after all the glorious pleasure of cycling, the run was agony from the start. An hour and a half of pure hell - certainly among the most difficult 90-minutes in my life. The first 5 kilometers running out of town were tolerable, but the next 5k took us out into the rice fields with the sun beating down and several long gradual uphills. I was feeling discouraged by fact I was not moving past people as quickly as I usually do during the run portion of a triathlon. It seemed like I was hardly moving as I trudged along and was relieved at the kilometer markers that I wasn't doing quite so bad as I felt (4:04 per kilometer pace for the first 5k, 45 minutes at 10k). When I slowed down for coke and sports drink at the 8-kilometer aid station I completely cramped up and was forced to stop and stretch.

I believe the important thing in the sport is challenging yourself against the clock and your own potential. But in the pain and the mind-numbing heat of Sunday's run, one thought dominated my conscious -- catching up to Dave. The course is an out-and-back with the turnaround exactly at 10-kilometers, so at that point I could see that I was 3 minutes behind Adam and 1:30 behind Dave. Without this motivation I might have just found some shade and taken a nap and waited for evening to finish. But I knew that since running is my strength I am supposed to be able to make up distance on people during the run. This sense of competitiveness was amplified by the fact that each of the three times I passed Keren (during the bike, as he came in on the finish of this bike, and on the run loop) he shouted out how far I was behind Dave and how I needed to hurry up.. I caught up with Adam in the heat and we commiserated about our hatred of hot weather. Then I started trying to chase down Dave and for at least two agonizing kilometers I could see his blue jersey a few hundred meters ahead of me. "What took you so long to catch me" Dave asked when I finally ran up alongside him at around 18k. I could barely answer since I was breathing too hard. I pushed ahead to finish the run in 1:28:49

I had another inauspicious finish (like ironman), cramping up again after crossing the finish tape and being dragged off to the ice/salt bath. I had hoped to cheer on Dave and Adam, but it took me too long to get back on my feet and limp over to the finish chute.

I would certainly recommend the Sado Island event to other triathletes. It is a scenic course, a well-organized event, and a nice island excursion from Tokyo. For beginner triathletes there is a generous cutoff and a friendly crowd to cheer people on who were still finishing the 127-kilometer course at 6pm, 11 hours after the event start.

Fuji-Yoshida 10k

It is all a matter of mental mindset going into an event. This past weekend at Fuji-Yoshida I was mentally prepared for a relatively easy tempo run. But the course was all uphill for the first 5k and all downhill for the last 5k. Now if I had planned on working through a long up and down course I would have been fine.

Back in October of 2004, amidst the painful recovery from the absurdly hilly Takao Trail Run, when Keren Miers first recommended the Fuji-Yoshida Fire Festival. Keren painted a vision of milk and honey - runners happily frolicking up and down gentle inclines through a thick, fragrant forest of pine and cedar trees nestled at the base of Mount Fuji.

And though it was a scenic and fun course, the happy frolic turned into one of those painful death slogs for me. My struggle was also because I went out too fast. I had told Adam moments before the starting gun that my enjoyment of the race is inversely correlated with the speed of my first kilometer, but somehow I ignored my own advice - something inherent in starting on a track heightens my sense of competitiveness. Moreover I had not figured on such a long climb - a steady uphill for the first half of the run and then a hard downhill from 5k to 7.5k and again at 9k.
My splits -
First 5k - 20:19
Second 5k - 18:02
Even with the faster second 5k it seemed like half of the runners in Japan passed me on the long downhill. The course was an interesting challenge, though I wish I had been better mentally prepared for the uphill.



Protein loading
Of course Fuji-Yoshida was not so much about the run - it was about the barbecue - a staggering array of meat and vegetables. As expected Namban's Australian runners (Colin, Steve) lived up to the stereotype of a nation of barbecue aficionados. The concept of a team barbecue proved popular. I have found that invariably in Japan when going out with a group we eat in restaurants rather than at barbecue picnics or dinner parties. So barbecuing was rather novel and most people ate and drank to excess.

The majority of my athletic endeavours this year have been triathlons at which I eat like crazy before, during and after the event. I seem to have forgotten that in a running race of a distant like 10k I feel much better when I hardly eat anything at all for many hours before the run.

So you might naturally ask at this point whether it would be more logical to have a big feast AFTER a running race rather than before. Well, yes, likely the race performance would benefit. However we consistently find that the team is simply too tired to prop themselves up for a big dinner after a hard race, let alone have the energy to prepare a barbecue. Very often one contemplates all the great things one will eat and drink after a triathlon. But then after hours and hours of eating gel and sports drinks in the hot sun your digestive system is so trashed that all you can do is sip the soup you are handed at the finish line aid station.

Perhaps Keren and Stu have the best strategy for post-race dinner - they make a point of staying at the Grand Hyatt whenever they do triathlons, and after the race they simply call down for room service.

Sado Triathlon - Too much training too late?

Challenge yourself to the hardest rase. You'll have the longest day of your life. but you'll meet great Volunteers who will support you in the rase.
- Sado Triathlon Inspirational Motto


So with the Sado half-ironman looming on September 3rd I feel compelled to suddenly start training. After weeks of not riding at all, since August 1st I have ridden close to 600 kilometers. During each of the past two weeks I have put in 15-hours of combined bike, run and swim training.

It is not at all clear that this burst of training will help my performance at Sado. For that matter it may cause me to be more tired at the event. The literature on triathlon training generally recommends a series of hard weeks and rest weeks over the course of several months, and then a 3-4 week taper.

But my training has long been a function of how much time I find that I have to train, and what I simply feel would be most enjoyable to do on that particular day. In the past few weeks a whole community of cyclists have emerged to ride with at Oi-futo -- Mary, Chuck, Motozo, Chris, Keren, Joe -- and I have been inspired to ride again. Instead of a lonely mind-numbingly boring ride around and around a bleak, industrial wasteland, the Sunday morning ride is now a festive party. The Wednesday night track workout has always been a festive party, and lately even more so with over 30-40 people enjoying the intervals together.

Of course with 10 days to go to Sado I could start tapering now, but this weekend is the most festive party of the late summer -- the all-important Fuji-Yoshida Fire Festival 10k

Coffee Blog - All coffee, all the time

Greater Perrinville's worldwide audience continue to report that they are sick and tired of my whining about cycling in hot weather and my running injuries, and that they want to hear more about the thing that obviously matters most and appears to have the greatest impact on my triathlon performance -- drinking coffee.


Today's NY Times reports even more benefits from drinking coffee -- a review of studies by American Medical Association found strong evidence that habitual coffee drinking reduced risk of serious ailments including heart disease, diabetes, and liver cirrhosis by releasing antioxidants which help control cell damage. I had been trying to consume more grape juice and blueberries for these healthy antioxidants, but the latest studies show that coffee is actually a better source of antioxidants. This report comes on top of the earlier research I discussed which showed that coffee helps performance in endurance events.


Needless to say I was delighted to read this, and immediately began increasing my coffee consumption. Before I finished reading the article this morning, I began brewing a jumbo, American-sized pot of Peet's Las Hermanas blend coffee

The coffee tastes excellent and I was able to help to empower the women of Nicaragua in building an environmentally sustainable community as well as improve my long-term health situation

As I write this I am drinking an enormous Segafredo latte. No research as of yet on whether the chocolate cream cookies that I am eating with the latte is actually good for me, but I am figuring it is just a matter of time until scientists report that cookie consumption is correlated with longevity, so I am going to eat the whole package..

Yasso 800

Last night at Oda Field the group ran the Yasso 800 workout

The idea of the Yasso 800 is that the average time of ten 800-meter intervals in minutes and seconds will predict one's marathon time (in hours and minutes). 

So last night I ran an average 800-meter time of 2:38, implying I am capable of a 2 hour and 38 minute marathon. 

The key point here is that this projection only suggests a theoretical capability.  Since I could barely run 14-kilometers on the weekend, it is highly questionable whether I could run a marathon at all right now, let alone complete one in a time of 2:38

Nonetheless it was an encouraging workout, and certainly among the most grueling I have done in months.   I ran with Omar and Taro, and when Omar took us through the first 800 in 2:35, I knew it was going to be a struggle.   An added challenge comes from needing to complete a 400-meter jog between the intervals in the same time interval that we run the 800s, so 2:38 in my case.   My the end of the 12-kilometer I was drenched in sweat and struggled to  find energy to shower and make it to the post-run dinner.

Back on the bike

It begins to dawn on me that I only have a bit over a month to prepare for the Sado Island Astroman Triathlon on September 3rd and that based on my current training I am absolutely doomed.  Cycling was my weakness at Japan Ironman, so what do I do to prepare for the next event?  I stop cycling completely (except for a few spin sessions).  Not only do I risk an even more embarrassingly slow cycling time - I risk being so exhausted after the ride that I lack leg strength on the run.

My most recent excuse for not riding, on top of risk of vehicular collision, rainy weather, hot weather, lack of 4-hour time blocks, lack of medical insurance.. (it is really remarkable how many excuses I dream up for not riding) is that my headset has been damaged - the ball bearings were crushed and the ring worn out.   Naturally I couldn't figure out what was wrong with my bike (I can barely figure out when I have a flat tire), but the surprising thing in this case is that the bicycle shop couldn't seem to figure it out either.   The bike shop had my bike for weeks and told me it was repaired when in fact it was not.  Naturally they were very apologetic when they finally fixed it last week and they did not charge me for any labor costs.   I was pretty relaxed about the whole matter - lets face it, I was lazy about riding anyway.

So finally this week, despite all my moaning in earlier blogs about my aversion to hot weather, and my concern that triathlon training is bad for my health, I push outside my comfort zone and get on my bike and ride 80 kilometers around Tokyo's 9-kilometer Oi-futo loop.  For awhile I felt pretty good - maintaining a speed over 30k per hour and keeping up with some of the packs of hardcore cyclists.  This  lasts for a couple hours before I begin to fade badly, and the ride home is misery.  Worse yet is how I feel on my long run later in the day.  My "long run" is about 14-kilometers.  I am aware that some people might not consider 14-kilometers to be a long run.  But for me right now 14-kilometres is much farther than most of my runs, and after the bike ride, the 14-kilometers seem to last forever. 

Unhealthy lifestyle

I attend Yoga for Triathletes again Saturday, and the more I hear our yoga instructor, Michael Glenn, talk about endurance training, the more swimming, cycling and running seem akin to smoking, drinking, and eating chocolate swirl ice cream. Rather than healthy lifestyle activities, apparently swimming, cycling and running are sinful indulgences that will wreak havoc on my lower back, quads, shoulders, etc.

This comes on top of my teammate Anthony Zeller explaining to me his hypothesis that the human body has an optimal capacity of 25,000 miles and just like a car, once you click past that point it is all downhill with lots of time in the repair shop.

Now I am regretting my misspent youth. I guess I shouldn't have squandered my 20s and 30s on those wasteful long, easy runs. Perhaps I should have played pool or darts or just drank, and then I could look forward to running along the beach in my twilight years and winning the over-80 age group.

Oh well, at least at least lately I have been making the most of my remaining miles and keep my back intact by emphasizing quality over quantity.

As noted in my blog post on Saturday (my quarterly training review), my training totals the last three months have been relatively low - only 30-40 kilometers per week of running. These limited workouts are mostly either interval work, long runs or tempo runs.

For example, two weeks ago Wednesday I did a ladder workout on the track with Namban Rengo and managed to hang on and run 3:50 for 1200, and 5:12 for 1600. Then at a 5k time trial last Wednesday I managed a time of 17:31 (despite running the first 800 in a ridiculously fast 2:32). This time is still somewhat feeble, but it is my benchmark for now, and if people ask me my 5k PB I will tell them I ran 17:31 in July 2006.

Quarterly mileage and training time review

This is ostensibly a triathlon training blog, so at least every one in a while I suppose I should review my training totals.

The simplest and easiest measure for triathlon training is weekly hours of training.  Ideally I should be cycling, running and swimming an average total of about 12 hours per week, with 4-5 hours of that one long bicycle ride.  Since I have not been doing long rides lately, my mileage over the past three months is limited.  Hopefully it is adequate to maintain conditioning for the Sado half-ironman in early September

May 1-6      14:00
May 7-13      6:30  China Trip
May 14-20    4:00   Taper
May 21-27    4:30   Taper
May 28 -3    14:30   Ironman
June  4-10     6:00    Recovery
June 11-17    7:30  
June 18-24    9:45
June 25-1      5:30  Singapore Trip
July 2-8         9:30 
July  9-15      8:00
July 16-22     5:45
July 23-29     8:15

The typical week entails 2-3 swims, 2-3 bike sessions (including spin workouts), and 3 running workouts.

The other item I track is weekly running mileage (which is much more meaningful to me that swimming or cycling mileage).  Again, these figures are not terribly impressive (especially when you note that they are kilometers, not miles).  Certainly every other runner I know of who talks about how many miles or kilometers they are doing every week is doing considerably more that the amount I have run lately.  But then it stands to reason that the people who talk about how much they are running, tend to be the people who are running considerably more than the average. 
Here is my weekly running kilometers over the past 3 months --

May 1-6        22
May 7-13      40   China Trip
May 14-20    19   Taper
May 21-27     8   Taper
May 28 -3     47   Ironman
June  4-10     38    Recovery
June 11-17    46  
June 18-24    31
June 25-1      27  Singapore Trip
July 2-8         35
July  9-15      36
July 16-22     28
July 23-29     39