Consistency (Training Summary)

I have succeeded in maintaining consistent volume over the first 10 months of 2017 and even through the summer months:

OK, maybe 290 kilometers per month does not seem like much to any serious endurance athlete reading this, but for me it has been a challenge --

In my mileage summary post last February and in my January 2016 Mileage Summary, I lamented my annual Sisyphean struggle to sustain a competitive edge all year

And in my Just Don't Get Injured earlier this year I speculated that if I could just maintain consistency - much of the injury risk would be eliminated.  And, fortunately -- it has been months since I have felt significant pain from overtraining -- I have to think consistency has helped.

Now perhaps I will be in a position to shift back into training smarter and faster*


* being someone who generally believes in quality over quantity, and not logging mileage for its own sake

Fruit and Wine 10k

On Sunday I returned to Fruits Marathon convinced that I could improve on my time from last year. I felt that my knowledge of the course and consistent run volume would enable me to be both mentally and physically stronger and was eager to test where I am at right now.  Last year I clocked a time of 40:39, mentally struggling on early hills, allowing myself to succumb to negative and self-defeating inner-talk.  I had failed to anticipate that from 3.7-kilometers onward much of the course would be long downhill stretches that would allow for easier cruising as you can see in course profile here: 

   

Looking at my splits from 2016 here I see lots of room for improvement -- 

   

I started the race faster this year and feel like I attacked the course especially the tough 4th as best I could.  I was in the moment – pushing myself to the next .

Yet in the end my finishing time of 40:45 is actually SLOWER than last year! 

Here are my 2017 splits where it is apparent how I wimp out on the tough middle sections of the course:

You might think that this abject failure to achieve my goals would have left me shattered and broken as I shivered in the rain in the muddy finish area after the race. 

But in the battle to be on the podium I had improved dramatically.  Last year I had finished in 8th place.   

This year I was in 4th place with 200 meters to go, knowing that the top 3 finishers take home coveted local grapes and the bottle of vintage local wine.  I had been battling for 3rd place with another guy in my age group since the middle of the race, 

I unleash a ridiculously fast kick with only 100 meters to the finish line. I am not sure where all this  strength came from - why hadn't I run faster earlier?  I blow past my poor age-group friend and am ecstatic to capture 3rd place and the glorious prizes 
   

I know, like I’ve discussed in this blog previously - grown-up runners are supposed to be absorbed exclusively in the inner game - battling to improve against previous times not sitting behind someone else and out-kicking our compatriot runners at the finish line like some high school kid or like a triathlete. 

And lets face it - my colleagues who are knowledgeable about wine would not even be willing to drink wine from the vineyards of Yamanashi.   As for me personally, I don't even LIKE wine whether it is considered good wine or not.

But that's not the point.  I am not sure exactly what the point is, but in any case my mediocre time is quickly forgotten and my memory of 2017 Fruits Marathon is all good. 

Happy Science (Tazawako 20k Race Report)

September has been a cruel month for running races -- coming right after my summers of heat, travel and triathlons.  Last year I suffered a complete meltdown in the Vietnam Mountain Marathon and two years ago I struggled to survive the Inagi Aquathon.  

My one redeeming September run was four years ago when I managed 1:24:14 at Watarase for Half-Marathon on a warm day on flat course at 90% effort.  I enter last week's Tazawako 20k hoping to be a bit faster than at Watarase – which I figured would convert to maybe 1:18 on the 20k course around Tazawa Lake.  

In any case it sounds like a pleasant journey to an area I have never visited.   The one logistical hiccup is parking limitations at the lakefront starting area -- meaning that we  arrive a full 2.5 hours before the 10am event start.

I grumble and moan incessantly - I picture us huddling out in some muddy, windswept field, shivering on a thin tarp  for two-plus hours.  Fortunately my teammates have participated in this race year after year, and have identified an ideal base camp - only 100 meters from the 20k starting line, complete with changing and bathing facilities -- the opulent house of worship for a fringe religious group  called Happy Science

Seriously, I am not making this up – Happy Science is the actual name of the religion.  With a name like that I am not particularly surprised when we arrive at a gleaming, palatial, wedding cake-like building, and walk into an ornamental entry hall where we are greeted by a row of smiling young women in immaculate white outfits.  I am more surprised when we are escorted to into an opulent changing area for men and it is packed with other runners.  

At this point -- still two full hours before race time -- the numerous other runners using Happy Science as a base camp, begin emphatically stretching.  I am puzzled by their zeal since I doubt many of them stretch much at all before their training sessions.   I have tried to follow the rule of keeping my pre-race warmup & stretching routine only slightly more than my pre hard-workup warmup (learning years ago first-hand about exhausting oneself during a warm-up).  Observing all this pre-race energy and tension starts to make me anxious. 
  

So I wander off by myself down a long hallway deeper and deeper into the mysterious church, past a sign in Japanese (perhaps prohibiting entry to non-believers?), and into the sumptuously furnished library area.  

Of course I am terribly curious what kind-of religion would call itself "Happy Science" ?

– is it some sort-of blend of New Atheism, Utopian Marxism, Epicureanism, and recent Happiness Studies?  No, as far as I can tell from comic book style books I begin rapidly skimming through, it is really none of these.  Rather it is haphazard amalgamation of business productivity homilies,  a sprinkling of references to traditional religions and a baldly straightforward conservative political agenda.   I am still searching for the “Truth that will bring happiness to humanity", or simply any connection to a higher spiritual universe that might allow William James to characterize it as religious experience,  when suddenly I hear footsteps approaching from outside. Oh no - I fear that I will be apprehended by one of the Happy Science young women in white, perceived as an ideal convert, and worn down by some elaborate brainwashing indoctrination.  



It still seems a bit too early to start preparing for the race, but I bolt out of Happy Science and out into a throng of runners where I end up doing some 4 full kilometers of warm-up.





So I am well loosened up by 10am when the gun goes off, and so I go out pretty fast - 

covering the first 5 kilometers in 19 minutes

Then I consciously slow down a bit and hit 10k in around 38:30 

The hills from 13k to 19k slow me down further, 

but I hang on and finish in 1:19:35  












I am on the podium – 3^rd place in my age group 


– and I win a fish 

So September does not prove as cruel in 2017.  

My time is slightly slower than I hoped for, but I am philosophical --  the Happy Science literature has informed me to be modest and to keep striving to be my best.

Whidbey Island Triathlon

Several summers ago, I found myself in the midst of a triathlon race during one of my casual training rides around nearby Whidbey Island. 


The race leaders zoomed by and  I wondered how I might fare if I competed in what I learned later was the annual Whidbey Island Triathlon.  

So last Saturday I entered this friendly, little race and enjoyed a splendid day on the lovely island and the excellent course.  Like at the Chelan-Man Triathlon 2 weeks earlier I feel I executed very well, and was pleased with my effort.  



However in terms of answering my question of how I would fare competitively?  Well, maybe I need to take a more modest assessment of my relative abilities.  


It is nice to tell myself I am a global elite triathlete, mixing it up in world championships, but then when I enter a neighborhood event with a few hundred participants I start to expect that I will place among the top handful of overall finishers and perhaps win my age group.  This is what I expected as I arrived on Whidbey Island.  Even during the race I was under the delusion that I was among leaders when adjusting for the wave start.   


Upon crossing the finish line I saw that a list of earlier finishers had already been posted and I was startled to see that not only was I nowhere near the overall leaders -- I was a mere SIXTH in my age group.  My age group is only a 5-year category, and the top 3 guys were some 10-18 minutes ahead of me - an eternity for this short of distance.  

Even moving up to the 55-59 age group would not help me that much - Saturday's time is a couple minutes behind 3rd place in that division.  Interestingly I would have placed 1st in the 25-29 age group and 2nd in 20-24 age group (lending more support to idea that triathlon is a midlife crisis sport).


Looking at the race result breakdown, it is apparent that my limited swim and bike training have not been adequate race preparation:

Swim - 18:18  /  74th place 

Bike -  1:04:37 /  42nd place

Run -   22:59 / 4th place 

Or obviously you might look at this breakdown and say if I am so damn caught up with being on the podium why don't I just stick to running events (or half-ironman distance triathlons where the relative distances are more favorable to running).  

That thought did briefly cross my mind after the race (I only have running races on my calendar for the next nine months).  But I tried to shake off the loss of motivation for triathlon competition and for doing swim and bike sessions -- racing is supposed to serve a symbiotic relationship with my training -- inspiring me to push myself and create meaning around my workouts.  Just running is not healthy for me I remind myself. 

Moreover, rather than tiresome, repetitive  "triathlon training",  much of my summer 2017 swim and cycling has been fascinating new discoveries --



- Olympic Discovery Trail - A paved, off-street, trail spanning most of the length of the northern Olympic peninsula through forests and farms and small towns.

- UBC to Spirit Park to Kitsilano over Burrard Bridge to English Bay cycling in Vancouver - What an amazing urban ride  


- Kitsilano Beach Swimming Pool - A 137-meter, heated salt-water pool that sits next to the beach with stunning views of the soaring Vancouver skyline and mountain backdrop.  I swim at sunset in a remarkably smooth flow of swimmers 

Chelan Man Triathlon

It was imperative that I do at least one triathlon in 2017.   I needed to give some sense of purpose to my daily swims.  I needed to compel myself to do at least a few bike rides this year.   I needed to feel a little bit like a triathlete - not just a runner who cross-trains.  

So I enter the Chelan Man Olympic Distance triathlon.  I had not visited the Lake Chelan area since I was a young child and was curious to see how all the Seattle wealth had transformed the place.   I was expecting a pretty large-scale intense atmosphere, but I find ChelanMan a casual, smaller, local affair.  I arrive at noon the day before the triathlon and spend the afternoon playing in the lake and cycling along the waterfront.  

The Chelan area accommodations on Airbnb started at $500 per night when I checked 3 months ahead of the event.  Then when I checked back on the website 2 months before the event, even these prohibitively expensive spots had been snapped up.  So I slept the night before the event at a nearby state park in the back of my father’s SUV.   The other US campers arrive at the park in huge RVs and had assembled large, military-scale campsites with spacious tents, elaborate barbecues, camp chairs, additional banquet-sized tables, spare generators, massive water containers, clotheslines, strings of thick electrical cords, light poles,  all covered by a huge superstructure circus-tent style shelter. The adjacent campers are intrigued by my customary minimalist style.  I've only brought a folding pad, some snacks, a sleeping bag a toothbrush and my triathlon gear.  Even at that I feel overwhelmed by the logistics of simply dealing with my swim, bike and run bags .  I am perfectly comfortable in the SUV and after my long day playing at the lake I quickly fall into a deep sleep.  

The next morning I awake at sunrise to  perfect conditions  My confidence is only slightly shaken by the looks that the old bike I leave in Seattle receives, and the contrast between it and all the $10,000 bikes.  But then I have never been convinced the bike makes a huge difference.

I feel great on the swim leg -- drafting much of the way and then sprinting when I spot the finish marker looming on the shore.  It is my most enjoyable triathlon swim ever.  Too bad my time at 31-minutes is still much slower than my Olympic Distance swims of a few years ago.   But the important thing was how smooth I felt. 

I was in the last starting wave and am one of the slower swimmers, and I so I find myself passing one after another other cyclist on the course's rolling hills.  It is great fun — I enjoy the scenery and the feeling of speed and of being back on a bike.  Too bad my time of 1:12:35 is a bit off from previous triathlons.  But then what can I expect having done so little bike training over the past 11 months.  My longest training ride was only a paltry 30k.  

The lack of bike training seems to take a toll on my run time - 41:57-- but agin, just like on the swim and bike legs I feel relatively comfortable and appreciate the camaraderie of the other triathletes who are quick to yell out encouragement.

I finish 32nd out of 321 entrants in a time of 1:29:57

Swim - 31:26   165th

Bike -  1:12:35  65th 

Run -      41:57  10th

Obstacle Course Race

I find myself coaching a little band of beginner obstacle course entrants in preparation for the Spartan race.  When I proposed that my Spartan race teammates get together for some training sessions I had envisioned a series of tough, anaerobic training sessions rapidly mixing tempo pace running and calisthenics at a high level of intensity.  But my happy-go-lucky team of beginners has no appetite for strenuous effort and discomfort, and instead we spend our training sessions working on technique for navigating monkey bars and climbing over fences and under barriers. So the training is more like a return to childhood — frolicking at a playground and rolling in grass.  I am a bit worried as the event approaches and some of the team struggles to do even a few push-ups or one pull-up.  So we practice working as a team to help boost each other over a fence.  

I had initially sought to push to the limit and test myself in the obstacle course race - compete against the younger participants and see how I feel coming in and out of the obstacles at an elevated heart rate and out of breath.  But when race day arrived it was an obvious choice to stay with my team and help each other.  

The Spartan Race is quite a spectacle — thousands of participants  winding around a 6-kilometer course on a military base all day long in wave after wave.  We are a bit intimidated as we arrive and see the muscular elite group in the morning wave.  We start at the back of the 11am wave and jog to the first barrier - a 5-foot wall which my team lifts and pulls one another clumsily over.  Then we roll sideways under barbed wire -- and as you can see above the rolling practice clearly paid off.  

My main concern given how old and feeble I am was how my back would handle the 3 obstacles involving carrying things -- sandbags, buckets of gravel and giant iron “atlas balls”.  The latter I just don’t even take the risk of trying to lift off the ground, and instead just substitute the burpees (Spartan Race has you do burpees if you don't complete the obstacle).  


But you my back seems to be strong enough for the sand-bag carry --  you can see me here awkwardly plodding through this obstacle  (though not actually hoisting the sandbag onto my shoulder as recommended).  

At the end of the course is the "wall of fire".  In the past I might have been cynical about such a contrivance.  But as we say at my Saturday morning Hill Repeats -- "It is all about the photo opps and social media" — so our happy band tries to join hands and leap over the wall of fire (really just a wall of smoke at this point).  We aren’t entirely successful at getting all 7 of us together ( but at least no one trips and tumbles into the flames -- which apparently happened at one obstacle course event).

We finish the 6k course in a time of 1:24:46 which put me in 2,567th place.  

What do I think of obstacle course racing now?  The event itself was certainly fun, and has been great fodder for conversation.  More importantly, having the race on my calendar provided a great target and incentive for various strength training that I hope to incorporate into my long-term weekly training regime.  It is harder to hit the weight room with the Spartan Race behind me.  I am a big fan of having events to focus one's exercise around, no matter how competitive or non-competitive you might be.  I can't imagine doing a lot of these obstacle events - they are expensive at roughly $100 a shot, a bit of a hassle compared to run events and some of the obstacles are a bit risky for the feeble elderly like me.  But I do hope to compete in a future obstacle event.   

Spartan Training

So as part of my new Spartan lifestyle and obstacle-course race training, I go to a Saturday morning "Spartan Training Session".  

I am very impressed with the well-organized, free session.  As I wrote in the HIIT and the Social Athlete post, socializing and camaraderie seem to be a useful driver of sustainable fitness lifestyle. 

We spend a lot of time introducing ourselves as we do some static stretching exercises and then play an introductory game involving merging into a big group, grabbing each others hands and then untangling the mass of people.  

I really, really can't imagine my serious triathlon mates putting up with all this for very long at all.  

But on this sunny morning I am happy to play games and make new friends. 

Then we start the actual circuit training and I quickly discover something I suspected, but which proves even more dramatic than I anticipated.  I am either relatively good at obstacle race elements (running, climbing on the bars, push-ups) or I am very, very, very poor (ducking under bars, hopping over barriers, jump lunges).

We start with one of the exercises I am pathetically bad at - ducking under a series of barriers,  and soon all of the other team participants have lapped me on the little circuit.  Two of the workout  leaders notice my achingly slow pace and my painfully stiff awkward form and they immediately express their concern -- they seem genuinely anxious about whether I will hurt myself - whether I will survive and not be carried off in an ambulance and potentially sue them. 

Three different participants ask me if I am OK.  All the other participants seemed to have started with a burst of adrenaline and competitive spirit, whereas for me after all my decades of doing frequent endurance events I instinctively pace myself.  Not to mention it is 8:30AM and I'm dealing with the constant background fatigue from my various other training sessions.  I feel rather bad to be causing the leaders and groupmates so much distress-- maybe I should have worn my Ironman World Championship top? I have to think that would assuage some of their concerns about my overall level of fitness. 

I am fine when we climb on the monkey bars and then start running around the park.   

Then I decline to do the sit-ups altogether.  I realize this is not in the true spirit of the ancient Spartan warriors, but I have read so much criticism of sit-ups over the years and never liked the way they felt, and so I waited in the plank position while the real Warriors paired up and powered through the 30 sit-ups.  

Then at 9:40am, I commit another unpardonable Spartan Warrior sin -- I need to leave early.   When I tell our group leader that I need to bail out with 20-minutes remaining in the session he looks at me with a mixture of pity and disdain.  He tells me that I did a fine job and if I continue to work at it I will be stronger next time and perhaps have the endurance to make it through the whole workout. 




Epilogue -- It is at this point, at 9:40am that my most intense obstacle course racing begins, I have a group waiting for me across town to lead Hill Repeats and I sprint out of the park, down busy city streets, and into Ginza station - the whole way weaving and dodging people -- I must have been running at 3:20 per kilometers pace.  I manage to make it to hill repeat session just in the nick of time to lead everyone through the hill sprints. 

Pivot to Obstacle Course Racing

I decide to pivot to obstacle course races.


I sign up for next month's Spartan Warrior Race. 






A few of the more traditional runners I know in Seattle heap scorn and derision on these events.  To the purists, events like Tough Mudder, Warrior Dash, and Spartan Races are just a silly, fad for America's Millenial generation whose coddling helicopter parents have made them the "Slowest Generation" and who lack the competitive spirit and toughness to excel in marathons and half-marathons. 

The Spartan Race looks tough enough to me, and these obstacle races seems to have become a legitimate part of the sporting landscape.   According to Running USA, more runners participated in non-traditional races than traditional events, such as half-marathons and marathons, and these obstacle events have seen a 40-fold growth in participation since 2000.

Anyway, I am not really a purist.   If the triathlon was modified so as to be comprised of the three sports of  running, cycling, and bowling I would be willing to give it a shot, and start working on my bowling.    Admittedly I am partial to the sports I am better at, but I feel that it is good to diversify my training and my experiences. 

More simply put, I am keen to try something new right now.  

And I am keen to work on some of my weaknesses.  Unlike traditional road races, climbing over a 10-foot wall, up a 30-foot rope, over and under obstacles demands greater flexibility, coordination and upper-body strength - areas that I seek to work on as I grow old and feeble and inflexible.


And I am keen to continue my emphasis on high-intensity interval training.    Yet another recent study shows benefits of high-intensity training - slowing or reversing aging at a cellular level.   I view any one of these studies with skepticism, but this particular study comes on top of earlier studies showing HIIT as optimal for race performance improvement, cardiovascular health, neurological gains, and fat-burning.




The spartan race is on May 27, and so I need to start shifting into a Spartan Warrior lifestyle.