end of week 6

well, we finished up week 6 feeling pretty good about everything.

didnt really start out that way though.

I did some reading on various websites about increasing VO2Max. seems like that is my biggest problem, i breath a bit too hard versus what i am doing. so i figured to do some looking around and see if there were some exercises or breathing somethings or maybe some magic pills i could take to help me out with my weakest part. so after a lot of looking around i came up with three big things. 1 - do a lot of sprint workouts - where you go to max and your body gets better at it. this is kinda what the last few workouts have been like so thats a good start. got on a website with a ton of people writing up their experiences. the two biggest things pill wise are Cordyceps - a fungus from china ( gads ) and beta-alanine - an amino acid.

the cordyceps is supposed to help carry oxygen through your bloodstream more efficiently and the beta is something that keeps your muscles from getting tired while you run/bike/swim - allowing you to go farther and faster. if you combine them you should be able to go both faster and farther and not be out of breath. PERFECT!

At first I decided to try just one pill type for a week or 2 before adding the other, but when the Resa took both – I decided to try it. both pills are simple, not full of 54 different things that’s could be bad for you. also i got an email from the Canadian national champion guy saying what he does to train - not the workouts - but the stuff he takes. he highly recommends green tea and beta-alanine. other than that he just listed a few recovery protein drinks. actually about 5 different ones based on long workout - short, fast, day time, weekend. it was pretty funny, the different recovery drink list was pretty long. i just drink a gatoraide or sometimes - once a month i get a protein shake. so the two biggies are green tea before a workout - gives you a caffeine hit and also it burns more fat if you do it.

and Beta Alanine. i looked at these for a bit on the web. i didnt want something like half beta-alanine and half 53 other things like caffeine - which i dont like or ginseng or superblaster plus or what ever. so i picked Carnage - goofy name, but it was only beta-alanine plus some vit B. also i picked up a bottle of cordygen - the cordyseps stuff. again just that without any extra surprise bonuses.

Carnage: For soreness. This is the pill the Canadian guy suggested. After the first day of Carnage I felt really well. And my first bike on it I felt that my legs were not lagging at all. We did 9 one minute hard sprints and also rode for about 1:20 minutes. Afterwards my legs felt about as they always do from that amount of effort. Kinda ballooned and tired. But not worse than normal. I think the stuff lets you work harder, but you still pay for it later. ;-) During the workout I rode in one gear higher than I usually do. It was as easy and I felt no burning. During the sprints I got out of breath – as I usually do, but my legs felt stronger the whole time. The run wed night I also felt really strong in my legs. I also felt no side effects after the first day of carnage. I feel that the carnage stuff is going to be very good. But that’s just the first few days worth. Right now I wish I had kept to the plan of only doing one for a week, but really my main reason to try both was not to keep up with resa, but that our marathon was planned for Sunday and I wanted to get the breathing one ( Cordyceps ) up to speed by then. I had no symptoms from the carnage that I noticed – the one they talk about is the tingles. Resa said she felt it running last night. but she took a lot more than i did.

Cordyceps: for breathing. Hmm… I have a different opinion on this stuff. We havnt done anything hard enough yet to know if it works. I did some more reading this morning on people who logged what they did and how they felt using cordyceps: one guy said it helped his breathing on biking and running. But that he had to take a week off because he got the flu. Which I would have thought nothing of except that I got the flu wednesday myself. It started about 3 hours after taking my first pill. Resa and I both woke up in the middle of the night feeling that it was 90 degrees in the room. I sat in the bathroom for about an hour and felt better. ( nasty bathroom stuff – like I had food poisoning ). That was tue night. Did some more reading on different web pages and the stuff *can* make you think you have an infection. It’s a fungus/mushroom type of thing. The guy in the original writeup said it lasted about 5 days really bad and another 10 lingering. But that he kept taking it. maybe your body stops fighting it after a while. He didn’t say he was sick from the cordy – but… I am thinking it might have been and he didn’t know it. wednesday just before running I took another cordy and felt pretty crappy on the run, my stomach was bloated and I felt like I had a cold going. wednesday night I took another and again woke up in the middle of the night with another nasty 1 hour bathroom break. Again 3 hours after the pill. Thursday morning I still felt sick. Headache like flu. A little dizzy. Achey knees and shoulder joints. Kinda fuzzy. Just all around yucky like flu. Light hurt my eyes and my ears felt clogged. Also a bit of the shiveries. My heart rate is also down a bunch beating about 48 per minute which seems *way* too slow – It probably has to do with not needing so much oxygen. But it gave me a headache I think. Also eating seems to make me feel better ( weird eh? ). Another item on cordy is the bowel movements can be nasty – got that for sure. Also the Canadian guy didn’t mention it and he said he has done in his words EXTENSIVE research and experimenting. I am guessing he has tried this for sure and doesn’t suggest it.

So…. I am stopping the cordyceps. never taking one of them again. i think it would be good for people maybe making a living at a sport - i could see if you could save 30 minutes on an ironman you might put up with feeling sick for 3 months. but not me...

the carnage... well, i think i will keep on with that to see how it goes. i am taking about 1/3 of what they suggest. but i certainly, without any doubt feel stronger than i would without it. resa also has taken that and stopped the cordy. the marathon looked like a rain out so we decided not to drive the 8 hours to do the race. it rained all day and the trail would be a mudpit so we ran around here instead. we went 12 miles and cut 30 seconds per mile off. which is pretty huge. just ran along and in the end we pretty much have a new PR for the half marathon now about 6 minutes better than ever. and we were never out of breath, went about as hard as we could - but i would think we could have gone a bit faster if we had tried to.

so. one for sure loss and a probable win. will see if it causes any side effects. the cordy stuff is just now getting out of my system. took about 4 days feeling better each day to get mostly back to normal.

in other news swam 2.3 k today in 51 minutes. wasnt trying all that hard, but that pace will get us done in about 1:30ish...

was a tough week. but next week is even harder. hopefully its easier because i wont be sick from chinese fungus and the beta-alanine turns out to be a winner.

ok. scores:

mentally i was at a 4 on wednesday, but feel tons better today. i will give myself a 7 for the week.

physically i give me a 7 also. really tired, spent 5 days sick - we need to up the distance on the running or we are going to be in big trouble. the book called for about 7 miles on the weekend and we did 12, and we both feel we need to be doing at least 20 on weekends.

workouts: 9 did them all and did them very fast. felt like puking when on the cordy and that ruined a 10 week.


learning stuff. bit bummed about the marathon miss. but no real big deal. :-)

week 5

yeoch. got tough all of a sudden. we blew off a bike ride earlier in the week because of resa's school, and made it up today with a bit of a mini tri. we rode about an hour and a half, ran about 6 miles and did our longest ever swim. it was a pretty relaxed swim, well, we were kinda tired so it was relaxed because we didn't have a lot of gas left. but i set a new all time distance record at 2300 meters. did it in 55ish minutes. which i think works out to about 1 hour and 30 minutes on the triathlon day. which would be a lot faster than i thought it would be about 5 months ago.

trying not to get too excited about that yet as i also have my first scary injury in about a year. i dislocated my right shoulder about a 10 years ago playing hockey. i managed to wrench it back in, but i missed a shift so i felt kinda lame about it. then over the next 3 years i had it come out about 7ish times. at the end it came out so easily i decided to get surgery to fix it. which worked and i have had no trouble with it for 7 years. until thursday. it feels like its coming out of the socket when i reach out with my right arm as i breathe to the left. so only once in a while, but gads its scary right now. i sure don't want more surgery. well, more weights and some thinking about what i am doing in the pool should help that.

in other news i have been reading some websites on sports nutrition and vitamins. wrote someone there and they referred me to one of the top triathletes in canada. this guy said to take your vitamins and also something else called beta-alanine. so i ordered that, it is supposed to keep your muscles from wearing down too much due to lactic acid burning. well... ???? i should be able to tell if that's helpful or not within a month. let you know how that all works out.

and this week should be one of the more difficult weeks we get this summer. probably the 4th most difficult. running a trail marathon on sunday. should absolutely destroy us, especially because rather than taper for it - we are going to be doing a pretty tough week anyway first.

also, we hope to get our wetsuits on saturday.


scores:

workouts: 9, about an 8 on results, but we did them all and felt hungry about it, so that alone bumps it to 9 on results. great if tiring week. :-)

mental: 7, really bummed about my shoulder. this would totally suck if i have a problem with that, i would be swimming one armed. nasty.

physically: 8, pretty tired but not all that bad. no other injuries, sore spots or problems. other than shoulder i am better off than last week.

ha ha ha finally

finally finally it gets angry.

sprinting up hills and sprinting on our run and the swim about doubled in distance. and thats the first 2 days. i didnt feel i could do any of them at the time... now i feel good :-))


good stuff!

Off week.

last week was an off week. didnt feel we needed it going into the week - but after a few easy days we started feeling better. so i guess we did. to make it an even easier week we did the level 1 workout week by mistake. so it really was an easy week.

being kinda a lame week i dont really have much to report on it. the weekend was pretty fun, we bumped the 1 hour bike and 1 hour run up a bit to about 4 hours biking and about 3 hours running, but otherwise nothing all that extreme.

in other news i need new equipment. everything is falling apart right now. the bikes need a lot of work, both our mountain bikes are pretty much un-rideable and sheila's broke the de-railer off completely. need bike gloves and some new bike shorts that everyone seems to use for the tri's. saw some people riding around with them yesterday - looked like something i could run in too. could use some new bikes too! :-)

also time to get our wetsuits. thinking to get something pretty thick with long sleeves so i dont freeze up in canada. my swimsuits are pretty worn out, need those and my goggles are so clouded up and scratched they could be replaced.

on the running i am thinking of getting a hat to run with, did that for the first time ever yesterday and i liked it. i hate running with glasses on, bouncing, fogging and irritating. but the hat was pretty good. shoes seem good. about 5 years ago i bought 6 pairs of running underwear, over the years i have thrown out about 3 of them, saturday another one ripped up and the last two have holes and are pretty thin, so i need those too.

this getting in shape thing is expensive!

back to the grindstone tomorrow...


weekly scores:

mentally i give me a 9. some lingering worries about maybe not getting in good enough shape by race day, but my confidence has gone up lately. the swimming is getting better. i think i swam a mile in 30 some minutes saturday. so thats for the good. i think my running is pretty poor and biking about average. so... more running over the next few months. :-)

physically a 9 too. a bit sore from the bonus workouts on the weekend. but seriously a one hour foundation bike ride is just too lame.

workouts i give me a strong 9. no blowups. ran ten yesterday if not really strong, then at least pretty good with 10.5 pace ( for us thats very good - with out super goal at 10min pace ) kinda blew off some of the stuff, did it all but didnt go all out a couple of days.


things seem pretty darn good right now. got some challenges coming up. trail marathon in 12 days.

first peak.

monday again...

this last week was a little harder than the first two. again we missed a day, and made it up with a triple on friday. waking up friday morning we felt totally caught up physically. so we rode our bikes around the city for a while and then went running. the run was a bit harder than we thought. did both hills and a track workout then off to softball practice and more sprinting in the outfield. after 3+ hours of hard running we went to the pool for our last workout of the day. that night we went out on the town and didnt get re-hydrated. kinda the opposite. woke up really thirsty. saturday was going to be bike day but we switched it around and made it swim and run day instead. the run was pretty rough. only went 5 miles but it was pretty hilly and at the end i was completely out of water. so. bad move on friday night for sure. later we went for another swim and got our first massage.

not really sure what to think about the massage. was a lot of stingy moments in there. she found a knot in the middle of my back on the left side which stung for about 20 minutes as she smashed it into the front of my body. also both calves had ginormous knots in them. otherwise nothing at all. which sorta surprised me. i figured every part of me would be messed up in some way. when i swim its upper back, arms and neck that usually hurt. running is knee and calves, biking is more upper legs and oddly neck again. also my right shoulder has dislocated about 8 times in my life and has had surgury to repair it. the left shoulder was shattered in a bike wreck in africa and slumps down 2-3 inches lower than my right. my left hand hangs a few inches lower than my right because of this and sitting in the aerobars is not symetrical. i am guessing this is the cause of the knot in the left side of my back, it was just under all the mashed up bones of my previously sound scapula. the resa is on a board of some county something or other and gets coupons for stuff in the county. one of them is this massage person who gives us each an hour a week and at a great price. so we are probably going to stick with it. saturday is her last day of the week and so we decided to start our massages last week. now with mondays off we have decided to make that massage day. so our second week is today. kinda looking forward to it.

sunday we went on our bike ride. i think the book called for a 1:10 long ride. but riding an hour on the weekend just seemed a bit too short so we bumped it up to seven and a half hours. was a great ride. we took the mountain bikes on this trail by the house. they have made great strides in lengthening and improving it over the last year. its now almost connected between canton and cleveland. there are a few small exit areas - one in downtown akron and another halfway between akron and canton. this second one looks like its almost ready. the downtown one could use some better signage as we got lost in the city for about 20 minutes. but otherwise a great time. you ride through swamps, hills, valleys, cities, forests. just about every type of scenery you would want. flowers, squirrels and homeless people. one group of three meth heads were trying to figure out the deep meaning of some of the graffity as we rode by. tons of people were on the trail, but it was pretty wide. the ones the scare me are the people showing off their kids learning to ride a new bike. "jerry, get out of their way. jerry. come on jerry. jerry! oh, i am so sorry you guys had to ride through the bushes to get out of jerry's way." people with dogs were never a problem, my guess is that dog owners like their dogs more than parents like their children. but the worst people were the fat people. the 400 pounders. again i have a theory on this. and it goes like this. the trail is for exercise, if only slowly walking. but still its exercise. and these large people feel that if they are going to exercise, if they are going to be that put upon by the world as to actually have to walk on a trail for 1/4 of a mile. well the world owes them back. and to get off of the CENTER of the trail is just too much to ask. cant everyone see they are exercising? why should they have to not only walk a quarter of a mile, sometimes UPHILL but to then have to dodge people on the trail? or worse, walk on the side of it??? ah, well. another slightly less annoying set of people are the ones that walk side by side or ride side by side. one on each side of the trail. we say "on your left" as we come up on them. about half the time the resa, as we pass through the middle of the group says "or, as you like, on your middle" but thats a bit funner as their expressions are worth a chuckle usually.

but most of the ride is just the three of us riding along. resa's sister sheila came up for the weekend.

so. done with week 3. week 4 is a taper or recovery or something. didnt feel like i would need it until saturday morning. then i really needed it. but recovered all day saturday after realizing how bad i did it friday and so the sunday ride was hard on my butt and especially hard on my shoulders as i dont have areobars on the mountain bike. but was otherwise a really fun ride.


weekly scores:

on the workouts i give me a 9. no blowups. saturday's five miles sucked more than it should have, but that was two hill days and a 2 hour sprint day in 2 days. so... duh. biking was great, swimming was also very good - did my first longer sprints. learning new stuff each trip to the pool and finally going often enough to be able to experiment. plan on getting some video wednesday. resa wants to add weights on the weekend so probably next week we will hit the weights after the pool.

mentally i give me a 9 also. feeling better about all three events. legs are getting stronger and the pounds are still dropping off. 195 now. goal weight is about 188ish. so its very much in sight now. would be a 10 mentally but i have a bit of a worry, not an important one. but my worry and shared by the resa is that the weekend events are going to crush our weekly workouts. like the next event is a trail marathon at the end of the month. but seriously there is no way - knowing this trail that we can finish in under 8 hours. good runners finish this focker in 5. we ran there 4 times last year and ran 13-17 each time. 3 times we couldnt finish. 2 from me and once from the resa. now we add 10 more miles on it. to get this done we would have to taper for 2 weeks and do nothing but sit. but we will probably have a full schedule right up to the day of the event. also the other 4ish events we have planned are going to be a bit too much maybe. but - like i said this is a not very important worry. probably we will show up, get just obliterated and have fun anyway running a 18 hour trail marathon :-)

and lastly physically i am about 7 to 8. feeling pretty spent. but very happy. glad today is off and this week is an easy one. wimp that i am.


:-)