Bikram Yoga in the Off Season

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These last few weeks I’ve been trying out Bikram Yoga.
Previously I had never been a big fan of yoga. This is because I’m not very flexible and yoga deals heavily in what I would call “flexible strength”.
Flexible strength means that you apply power when your muscles are in a stretched position. Many people who are more flexible than me can do this relatively easily, or at least do it in a way that the muscles can stand it. In the past, I’ve been so inflexible that when I put my muscles in a stretched state and then attempt to flex them, I inevitably pull the muscle due to the strain.
This really sucked and I stopped after trying yoga many years ago.
However, after much training this year, and with the help of my physical therapist’s suggestions on stretches and exercises, and couple that with ART, I have found that I can actually survive yoga poses and build my ability to execute them without pulling muscles.
Unfortunately, I think that Bikram will require many months, if not years of training to get to some level of proficiency. My race season training is about to start and I think that given time constraints, and the added stress training puts on my muscles, that I won’t be able to continue this once real training begins early next year.
It’s too bad. My coach thinks it is great heat acclimatizing training since you do it in a room that is heated to 100+ degrees.

Off Season Aches and Pains

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I’m heavy into the off season now, and not doing much training at all. It’s a great time for recovery, for recharging my body and brain from all the stress I’ve put on it over the past year.
But one thing has been confounding me.
Why is it when I am doing practically nothing, that I feel all these sharp aches and pains in my legs? And they feel as bad as when I REALLY have tweaked them during heavy training?
I asked my physical therapist about it. He says it’s because during the normal, heavy training season, you’ve got your body flooded with nice pain-killing endorphins. They’re there to kill as much pain as possible and keep you functioning despite all the damage your muscles are receiving (which is required for growth and improvement).
However, during the off-season when your training has backed off – guess what – so have your endorphin levels. So now you have nowhere near as many endorphins in your system and thus, small aches and pains which you may not have felt at all during the training/racing season are now brought to the forefront, and in greater pain levels than you would think. Small tweaks during the race season aren’t even felt and drop below the noise level created by the endorphins!
Then, I asked my physical therapist about the knots that have formed in my muscles. How could they form, when I rarely put my muscles in a stressed, contracted state as I normally see during race season training? I can feel them clearly as I roll my hands/fingers across my thighs and IT band.
He said that during periods of high activity, the muscles constantly move against each other, and there is a natural effect of breaking down these knots and adhesions as muscle fibers glide against each other. Once you remove that, there is a tendency for these muscle adhesions to form because there is less muscle activity to clear the small adhesions out.
All this just makes me itch to get back into race training – guess that’s what the off-season break is all about…!

Post-Marathon, plus 3 Days

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Freeze My Willies
After the race, I jump in a bathtub of ice cubes for 10 minutes. Thankfully it numbs everything and I can only stand it for 10 minutes. But on Monday, I hop in again but this time for 15 minutes. Definitely nerves are getting killed off in the icy water, or maybe I’m just getting better at being a tough guy…
The ice bath really helps flush my muscles of the lactic acid and reduces inflammation.
Delayed Onset Soreness
Whoo hoo – big time! After my first ice bath, I am pain free! BUT…the next day that all changes. My calves seize up in a lactic acid frenzy and going up and down stairs is pure torture. Also, the rest of my body aches….
Never Forget Your Salt Tablets
I think I figured out why I feel so abused after this race. I think it’s because I didn’t have enough electrolytes and salt during the race, which causes my muscles to perform poorly and under more stress.
After the race, I felt my skin and it was real gritty from the salt that I sweated out. Definitely something to keep fine tuning.
Nike Triax Foot Pod Off
So I wore a Nike Triax watch with foot pod and heart rate monitor for the race. I would have worn a GPS but it doesn’t work very well in Manhattan with the buildings blocking the satellites.
Unfortunately, looking at my paces on the website and what was recorded by the watch, the Nike Triax is definitely off, even after I calibrated it on a track.
The Nike Triax said I ran only 25.3 miles. During the race, I remember looking at it and despairing at the pace it was showing me, which turns out to be slower than what the website said I ran.
How annoying to be thinking I was totally cratering when in fact I was not!
New Fighting Weight
Post-marathon weigh-in has me now at 147.8 lbs, versus 151 weigh-in at Ironman New Zealand. Now I have a new benchmark for what I should weigh during long endurance races….
Wise Quote
Tim Noakes in Lore of Running states:

“In a marathon, the race really begins from 32km onward, during the last 10km. From here to the finish, the marathoner’s brain speaks of logic and therefore appeals to the first voice, which will argue that there is no justifiable reason to continue. The marathoner’s only recourse is to call on the spirit, which forutnately functions independently of logic. It accepts that marathon training goes beyond logic – that humans were not designed to race marathons any more than they were designed to scale Everest. And the human spirit soon learns that the marathon is one way for ordinary people to define irrevocably their own physical, mental, and spiritual limits. By the 32km marker, the marathoner must be ready to define these personal limits.”

Such a truism. I ran literally a 9 mile “wall” and many times felt like quitting. But it was worthwhile as I broke through the damn wall at mile 24 to speed up to the finish.
When I tell people I ran the NYC Marathon, often the first thing that comes out of their mouths is, “Oh I can never do that.”
How easy it is for someone to define their limits under such favorable conditions. Is that the true test of the human spirit, to be defined on the couch in front of a TV?
I say NO.
Our growth comes from trials, and we really grow when we test our limits. Busting through a 9 mile wall was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, with body aching, IT band protesting, right quad cramping, even both forearms threatening to cramp under electrolyte loss. It hardens my spirit like nothing else!

NYC Marathon Race Report 11-6-05

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It’s 430am and I get up to prepare for the race. The night before I lay out just about everything I need so that I won’t forget anything. But of course, I already find out that I don’t have any electrolyte tablets in my apartment, a fact that will prove critical in the race later.
But I fill up my race bottles with flat Coca-Cola, put GU gel in my fuel belt, get my race number belt ready with the race number and attach my timing chip to my running shoe. I double check that and then I throw everything into my bag and off I go.
I arrive at the NYC Public Library and it’s still pitch dark. The stars are shining in the sky so I know it’s going to be a warm day, as it has been the last few days.
I sit on the bus next to a guy from Oregon. He says he’s trying to get to 50 marathons, one for each state. More power to him. I am not sure my bod could take so many marathons in so short a time, or else I’m gonna die before I hit 50 states worth of marathons.
The sun finally starts coming up as we get over to the starting line in Staten Island. Different starting area this year. I don’t see the usual half-a-huge-PVC pipe pee-ing station. And it’s organized more by color too – I am in the Blue section, so they have their own food and UPS trucks to take our stuff to the finish line.
I chat with this woman from Iowa who is running her first marathon in NYC. Hope she finishes OK.
So my pacing really sucks, and this year I decide to follow some of the pace leaders. For kicks, I decide to follow the 3:40 group since I am thinking I will finish in 3:45; but who knows, maybe I’ll have a great day and finish in 3:40!
In the start of these races, my mind is usually filled with so many emotions and thoughts. I think about my goals in this race and wonder if I will do OK or crater somewhere in the middle. I think about my whole life surrounding racing and what it means to me.
I think about support, of which I don’t have any live support this year, but yet so many others have friends and family to cheer people on. But I’ve told people not to come; NYC Marathon is not an easy one to watch for your friends. You need to plan very well. And the last two years I’ve been totally off my time estimates and I am sure supporting spectators would have been wondering if they missed me or not. But somehow, it is nice to have support if it’s there.
I think about my daughter and how much she means to me, and missing her very much. I also think about my new life in this startup and wonder where that will go.
My brain is a jumble, but it all returns to race focus as soon as the cannon goes off.
The crowd surges forward. I am ahead of the 3:40 group for a while, but not for long. With so many people, it’s impossible to keep pace. I blow right through and around people trying to get back on track, and I see the 3:40 pace leader doing the same.
The Verrazano Bridge serves to be a heavy duty warm up – it is an annoying long hill, and we are glad to see the other side where we increase our pace to make up lost time.
The next 12 miles are a blur. I manage to pull ahead of the 3:40 pace leader and the group and keep that lead until a mile or two after mile 13.1. I hit that at 1:51, a bit slow for 3:40, but in range for a 3:45 finish.
Then I reach the 59th Street Bridge and my ass is kicked. It is fairly steep and it drains me going up and over. The 3:40 pace leader has joined up with his buddy who is also leading another 3:40 group. They blow by me and I lose them.
But I never get my pace back. The climb wipes me and I don’t get a chance to recover. The following miles are a series of gradual, grinding uphills where I don’t get the chance to recover and rest.
At mile 20, my right quad starts twitching like it’s gonna cramp. This is where those electrolyte tablets would have made a HUGE difference.
I don’t get my groove back until about mile 24 when all of a sudden I find some more energy, and I get my pace back up to about 9:00-ish per mile. And miraculously, the cramping subsides as well. I manage to finish following the 3:50 pace leader and my time is 3:51, which I am very happy for. It is a new PR for me and a substantial improvement from my last year’s time of 4:24.
But man, I hurt all over. For some reason, this year’s race was more taxing on my bod than last year. I move through the finish line with everyone else and my legs feel very abused. I make it to where I pick up our race stuff and I change out of my sweaty, smelly race clothes, and into some clean clothes.
As I move (verrrrryyyy slowly) out of the meeting area, I reflect on the fact that I can’t move very fast at all. My legs and feet hurt a lot, and I say to myself that I can’t do this race again next year. I need a break!
All the while, I am wishing that some strong, muscular guy would come over and carry me home.
Don’t you ever wish that this would happen to you?…No?…Never?
Hmmm…well I was just kidding then…really…

Roar of Lions

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I am not in California any more. I am on the plains of Africa. The wind blows across the grasslands, the sun is high in the sky. I glide effortlessly across the land, each footfall moving me forward, the hills around me racing past my eyes.
I hear the roar of lions, and a lion is now running next to me, leaping through the brush as my legs cycle fast and endlessly, the grass whipping by me and the lion leaps….
I see the flames of a black dragon, its wings beating down above me. I feel the raw power of its jaws, its claws as it bursts down from the heavens, accompanying me on my run across a barren landscape where it dwells…
I feel the heat of the jet engine, a MIG-29 accelerates alongside me as I speed through the sky, the cloudscape racing past, and in the fury of my passing through the sound barrier they explode…
And now I am Rocky Balboa and I am running towards the city square, the crowd behind me surging with me but they cannot catch me, because I will win, I am a champion, I mount the stairs and with several bounds I am on top, and they scream Rocky Rocky Rocky…
…Motivational delusions from the Long Beach Half Marathon, 10-16-05.

Where there is Pain, There is Gain…

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These last few weeks I’ve asked my PT folks at Team Clinic to apply their Active Release Techniques (ART) to improving my performance. Basically, years of adhesions and scar tissues, as well as shortening of muscles and muscle structures, have led to restrictions in movement, which then lead to compensations in muscles which get overworked because other muscles aren’t working, which then leads to lessened performance or injury.
So they use ART to get to critical muscles and muscle structures (ligaments, tendons, etc) and break down some of the adhesions, allowing freer movement and less restriction, thereby increasing in athletic efficiency and reduced possibility of injury.
Well, one thing I gotta say is that it hurts like crazy. When the ART practictioner digs his thumb into your psoas and tendons connecting to your hip, I am writhing in pain and screaming in the clinic. Nobody pays attention because screaming during ART is commonplace and nobody really cares anymore…except the new patients who always wonder what they’ve gotten themselves into….hahah.
He then repeats this with all my major muscle groups, and then goes to my glutes where the other major restriction point is. And then it’s another 3-5 minutes of writhing in pain.
But the results are staggering.
I was doing some 800s and 200s on the track this last week. Prior to this track session, I was working out with 400s at about 1:45. Just before the Pac Grove Triathlon, I cranked out a 1:39 400m and wasn’t winded. This last week, I improved my time to running 800s between 3:11 and 3:21. Now usually when one runs 400s at 1:45, an 800 is run sometime slower as you’re pretty much maxed out for each interval. So if you take my 400m time of 1:45 and multiply it by 2, you get 3:30 which is supposedly not a time you’re able to sustain for a few intervals, as you’re supposedly maxed out at 1:45 just to get to the end of the 400m.
So somewhere along the line, my efficiency has improved. My 800m time should predict that I should be able to run 400s at least at 1:35!
And then for my 200m time, I consistently cranked them out at :45, which is a whopping 6:00/mile pace!
WOW.
A few years ago, I never would have thought I could have run that fast. But here I am running that fast and still there seems to be room for improvement.
Medical and sports science have advanced so much in the last few years. Our understanding of how performance is achieved and how to increase performance is so much higher now than that of 10 or 20 years ago.
I’m using all of that and applying it to myself. It’s all a big science experiment.
How fast can Dshen REALLY go?
Some parts sure hurt a lot, like the ART, or today’s 2:15 run negative split workout where I pooped out right before the end (arg). But man, this pain is leading to some really great gains.
Stay tuned….

CANCELLED!

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UGH! The Waikiki Rough Water Swim this last Sunday in Honolulu got cancelled due to extremely rough conditions. Strong trade winds blew in and sent swells rising 10-15 feet. Wind whipped up the water and the surfers were lovin’ it, but not enough to risk the non-experienced swimmers of our race.
2 years ago, conditions were not as bad as on Sunday, and they pulled over half the people from the water. Strong 8-10 knot current flowing the wrong way caused many people to tire out and actually get pushed backwards towards Diamond Head.
I suppose that wouldn’t have been good, to actually been swimming slowly backward the whole way.
Time to get primed for next year – always a good thing to head to Oahu!

Half Vineman!

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Off to Half Vineman today!
Driving up with my buddy Dan who is a triathlon stud. Follow our exploits at Official Half Vineman site.
This the last year we can qualify for a Ironman Championships slot at a half ironman. They launched a new race series called the Ironman 70.3 series, which ends in its own World Championships in Florida in 2006.
I guess it’s more fair, but I was hoping to sandbag in to the Kona Ironman Championships one of these years via a half ironman, but now I’ve only got one more chance – this weekend at Half Vineman. After this year, I’ll have to try to qualify via full Ironmans. That’s tough due to the distance, but I’ll definitely give it my best shot.
Looks to be hot weekend in Sonoma! Time to pack…

Balance and Training

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Sent to newsletter of the Pacific Grove Triathlon’s request for thoughts on Balance, or balancing your training/racing with other parts of your life:
Balance between training/racing and the rest of my life has always been the eternal challenge. In solving my issues, I’ve found that there are three essential things to keeping training in your life without driving you or others around you crazy:
Time:
Oh don’t we all wish we had 40 hours a day so that we could do all the things we wanted to! But it just isn’t so. I have found a few things to help find time to train. The first is getting your training out of the way in the morning. I get up at 5am every day to hit Master’s swimming and/or run or bike and get it all over with by 9am. In doing your workouts before the rest of the world gets up, it doesn’t interfere with others’ “awake time”. Besides, doing your workout in the morning gets your energy going for the rest of the day. Also, sneaking workouts during the day is another way to get them in, such as during your lunch break or maybe even in the middle of the afternoon if your employer allows it. Doing mid-afternoon workouts is nice to combat that “take a nap” feeling that happens around 3pm.
Gaining the Commitment of Others:
Talk it over with your friends and family. Get them on board with your training. Tell them how important it is to you. Keep telling them until they understand everything. You’d be amazed at how many people have no concept of what it means to train 6 days a week and 3-4 hours each training block. They also have no concept of how much energy drain it can take and how that affects your ability to interact with them later in the day. Make them understand what it means to you personally and how your feel about it. The more they understand and can empathize with how much it means to you, the less likely they will be to react negatively when you are mid-way through your 4 month training program and their growing but hidden hatred of your absences explodes in your face…
Your Own Attitude:
Having the right attitude towards triathlon can make or break your commitment to the sport. To me, triathlon is more than just racing – I rave about its benefits to my overall health. When you think of triathlon training as your daily exercise workout in addition to competition, then it helps you prioritize it in your day as a lifelong commitment to health, versus just to the next race. It also helps you manage disappointment as having winning first place as your goal when you’re an average age-grouper isn’t realistic and sets you up for disappointment and ultimately quitting when your lofty goals aren’t met. Instead, you can enjoy the fact that you have more energy each day and you’re able to eat just about anything you want without gaining an ounce.

Carbo Pro! My Vineman Half Ironman Nutrition Strategy

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Just discovered Carbo-Pro. WOW! A tasteless addition to any sports drink, it dissolves perfectly and hasn’t upset my stomach. It has added to my stamina during biking. Just an extra scoop of this stuff in each large water bottle gives me an extra 100 calories or so in each bottle, which effectively doubles the calories in each bottle. Not so sure about running though – might stick to Coke.
Vineman Half-Ironman nutrition is working out to be:
Bike:

  • One Balance Bar, Yogurt Peanut, one bite every 15 min starting about .5 hour after start of bike.
  • GU Gel, Plain, one at start of bike, then starting 1.5 hours after bike start, one GU every hour.
  • 2 large water bottles, 1.5 scoops Accelerade Lemon Lime, 1 scoop Carbo-Pro per bottle.

Run:

  • GU Gel, Plain, every 45 min on the run.
  • 2 large Fuel Belt Bottles full of flat Coke, if they are not serving Coke. If they are, then 2 large Fuel Belt Bottles full of Accelerade Lemon Lime plus a scoop of Carbo-Pro.