Offseason swim improvements

I've been swimming with Technosport this past week, and it's been an interesting experience. I signed up for a stroke analysis camp last Sunday and as part of that camp you get get a week swimming with the club. So in addition to the Sunday session I swam with them Monday, Wednesday, and again this Sunday.

Last season I was pretty happy with how I swam. From just trying to make it through the swim in 2014 to consistently being in the first chase pack in 2015 was more than I had thought possible, given my limited time in the pool. 2 nights a week was all I ever did, and I know this shouldn't be enough to see any real swim gains.

Sure enough I did plateau pretty early last season. My results were good, but I wasn't getting any better after seeing some significant improvements over the first few months of 2015. Ideally I'd be in the pool at least 3-4 days a week, but with two young kids, a job that frequently demands lots of after-hours work, and two other sports to train for, it's just not feasible.

I put in a big run focus in September and October to improve my weakest discipline, and finished off that block with a 5km road race. Then my focus shifted to swimming. I still can't dedicate a lot of pool time, but the offseason is a great opportunity to fine-tune the stroke, hence the stroke-analysis camp.

I got some good feedback and some helpful drills to work on, and by the end of my time with the club I felt more powerful with less effort. Starting off the session with some 3-stroke drill really seems to help me with rotation and lengthening my stroke, so I'm going to work that into every session now.

I'm going to get back to two swims a week, with one session being a speedwork oriented session like I've been doing for the past year, and a session aimed at improving my Critical Swim Speed. I'll try to do a test this week depending on how I feel then get started with the plan. Getting up at 5:30am to swim with the club, coupled with a sick 5 year old and some rough nights with the 1 year old meant I was pretty drained by the end of the week and it was inevitable I would contract whatever my 5 year old had. I've keep it somewhat at bay with vitamin C, echinacea, elderberry, and eating raw garlic cloves - plus taking two days off training. I don't think I'll be in tip-top shape for a time trial on Tuesday, though, so we'll see if I get to that or not. In the meantime I'm back to running and the bike training is going well, so I'm full-on into my training schedule now, which last year didn't start until January.

Training with Power

The bike was my strongest discipline this past season, but I know there's lots of room for improvement. My training last season certainly wasn't haphazard - I planned out a periodized approach to the season with a base phase, build phase, and then a race-specific phase. I used videos from Sufferfest and CTXC to structure my workouts and used RPE for my intervals and heart rate training for my easy rides.

It all worked pretty well, and I put down some pretty good bike splits in my races. The only time I ever doubted my biking was in my last race, the Thousand Islands Olympic Tri. Specifically, I was unsure of how hard to go - I didn't want to leave any minutes or seconds on the table but didn't want to overbike and pay for it on the run. I still second-guessed my efforts long after that race was over.

I had planned for a while that this offseason I would train with a power meter, and it's now installed and operating. I went with a Power2Max unit - by all accounts they are reliable, accurate, and are relatively affordable. I didn't have the tool to do the bottom bracket swap so called in Adam from Velofix to do the installation (and take a look at my rear derailleur issue).

I'm using Trainerroad for my workouts and training plans and have a dual screen setup in my pain cave with trainerroad on one screen and whatever I'm watching on the other. Immediately apparent is that there is a significant difference between pacing a Time Trial based on RPE and using power. Keeping a steady, sustainable RPE over the course of a TT for my first FTP test resulted in steadily declining power. It took a couple tries to get the hang of properly pacing the tests, and I can already tell that having this tool is going to help immensely both in training and in pacing a race. It's great to have the power data to both guide my training sessions, and to look at afterwards.

I took some time off at the end of the season to let my saddle sores heal up, and then biked somewhat sporadically in an unstructured manner. I know my bike fitness has suffered a little, but I'm also confident it'll come back and I'll be able to make some gains and hit next season better than ever. The base phase for next season begins this week.

Healthy Eating Part 2 - Lunch

I find wraps to be really convenient foods to eat - they travel well, don't make much of a mess, and you can eat them on the go pretty easily. So far all of my lunches this year have been wraps.

The tortillas are easy to make in batches - I've used white flour but also sprouted spelt flour from the bulk barn (spelt is more nutrient-dense than regular wheat and the glutens break down easier; sprouting activates enzymes that aid digestion, increases vitamin content, and reduces phytic acid).

I've used a few variations on fillings, based on vegan athlete recipes such as those found in Brendan Brazier's Whole Foods To Thrive.

My favourite so far is based on the Indian Spiced Lentil-Hemp Patties found in Whole Foods to Thrive (recipe here). I don't shape them into patties or fry them though, I keep the mixture as is and scoop it into my tortilla.

Another good one from that book is the African Yam and Bean patties (here's a variation of that recipe). Same deal as the Lentil-Hemp patties - I don't make patties but keep it as a mushy mixture.

The common thing here is just trying to get as complete a protein load as possible with some carbs (I always eat raw veg like carrots and cucumbers on the side), so coming up with a wrap filling isn't all that complicated. Rice and beans is a common staple of many diets around the world and works well enough for these purposes too, and leaves a pretty blank canvas for aromatics and herbs/spices.

As with my smoothies, I can make up the tortillas and fillings on the weekend and then have them ready to go for my lunches all week. Fast and easy.

Biking the Gats

The hot spot to bike in Ottawa is in Gatineau Park, but I've never biked there myself as the whole reason I switched to road biking was to avoid having to get in the car and drive somewhere in order to bike. I've wanted to try out the Gats for a while now though, and as I was on my own this weekend, I took the opportunity.

My power meter purchase is going to necessitate new chainrings, so I wanted to assess my gearing and see if I wanted to stick with the compact 50/34 chainrings I have now or go for something a little bigger. Riding in the flatlands as I do, I don't have a lot of opportunity to use the small ring, so it sometimes seems like that gearing is wasted space. I can max out my top end gear, but haven't yet come close to maxing out the low end. So Gatineau Park would let me test both - the climb to Champlain Lookout would let me see if I would actually get all the way up to the biggest cog in my cassette (25t), and I figured on the descent I would be hitting the speeds needed to see if I would spin out in the smallest cog (11t).

So far all the races I've done are pretty flat, but it's possible at some point down the line I try a race in Tremblant or Muskoka, which are pretty hilly courses. Besides assessing my gearing, I also wanted to assess myself. I never train for hills so wanted to see how my legs responded to the climbs.

Lots of people (roadies, mountain bikers, hikers, and drivers) out in the park on this beautiful fall day. Perfect weather and the leaves are just starting to change. It took me about 45 minutes to get up to Champlain lookout from P3. I didn't do a race effort but certainly wasn't doing a Zone 2 ride either.

In terms of gearing, I think my current setup is fine. For some reason I couldn't shift into my biggest cog, so rode the steepest grades at 34/23. I could have used the 25 a few times but don't think I'd need a 28. I got down to 50/11 a couple of times but never got the feeling of spinning out. I could have pushed it harder but descending over 50km/h on a twisty road got a little scary. This is actually where I really noticed my lack of experience with hills. The climb was fine, but I didn't have a lot of confidence going down. I ended up catching a pack of cyclists and stayed off the back of them for the descent, following their lead. I rode all the big descents out of the aero position.

I topped out just under 55km/h, which I've actually done before, but on a much smaller, straighter hill, and primarily under my own power. It's much scarier to coast at that speed than it is to pedal it - I felt less in control. So I don't really know if I'd need a bigger chainring. Based on some calculations I should be able to go over 65 km/h in 50/11 without spinning out (68.3 km/h @ 120rpm). Going to a 52t chainring would get me up over 70 km/h, but I don't know if I'd ever have the opportunity to go that fast (or want to).

In terms of climbing ability, I felt fine. I passed quite a few fit looking roadies and never felt really taxed. Seems like cycle fitness is cycle fitness and I think my tendency to ride at a high cadence and use my gears probably serves me well in hills. So unless I end up doing Muskoka or Tremblant I don't think I need to add hill training to my plan, and even then I don't think I'd need to be heading up to the Gats on a weekly basis.

It was a nice ride though - fun and beautiful. Not sure when I can get there again, but I will be back.

Healthy Eating Part 1: Breakfast

Last year I made a commitment to becoming healthier, resulting in my transformation into a triathlete. In addition to exercise and cutting out alcohol, I also made an effort to eat healthier. I had been cutting back on red meat for years, and cooking vegetarian meals a couple of nights a week. I'd also gradually phased out most dairy.

Over the winter I shifted from cereal (with milk) for breakfast to smoothies, initially using yogurt, then completely dairy-free. I felt better, and while the occasional bacon and egg breakfast was delicious, it made me feel gross afterwards, making it lose its appeal. As I trained for my race season, I learned what I could about the role that nutrition played in fueling exercise and aiding in recovery. In particular, my post-workout eating and pre-race meals became very deliberate.

Over the summer, after lots of reading and thinking about my diet, I've stepped up my nutrition game even more. Reading stuff from people like Rich Roll, Brendan Brazier, and Matt Frazier, the whole-foods vegan philosophy of eating made a lot of sense to me, and I realized I had already been heading in this direction. I'm not quite there in terms of a full-on vegan diet, but I've committed to it for the two meals a day where I'm on my own: breakfast and lunch.

I've been doing the smoothie thing all year, but have now put more effort into making nutrient-dense smoothies that include protein and omegas. Last year it was basically bananas and berries mixed in a blender - now I'm including dark leafy greens and grains/seeds.

NoMeatAthlete has a good smoothie formula. Mine's a little more simple, and rotates a few ingredients around the base of bananas. I include a lot of dark leafy greens (kale, chard or beet greens), another fruit (blueberries or mangos - I buy a bag of frozen organic stuff from Costco), water, and either chia seeds or a mix of hemp and ground flax. I've also been taking advantage of our rhubarb patch this summer but that won't last much longer.

To save time in the morning, eliminate the need to fire up the blender should the baby still be sleeping, and ensure that my greens are nice and fresh, I premake the week's smoothies on sunday. They go in single serving container and into the freezer. I take them out the night before and I'm good to go for breakfast.

I also eat a small bowl of oatmeal (actually more often I just eat right out of the pot) mixed with a tablespoon of almond butter. Then I'm off to work nice and full and with a solid start to the day. And ultimately that's not much different than what I'd been doing on race mornings, and it's always good to avoid giving your body any surprises on race day.

Next, I'll talk about what I'm doing for lunches.

Planning the Offseason

Officially in offseason mode now - haven't biked since the 1000 Islands race in order let my saddle sores heal up (TMI?), but I have been running (more on that later). In terms of swimming I'm mostly in rest/maintenance mode until January when I'll start training hard again, and it'll be the same for biking when I get going again. Fall is an awesome time to be riding out in the country.

I'm currently going back over this season to shed a little more light on how I should approach training for next season. Here are some stats on how I did in each of the 4 races this year in terms of how high up I finished compared to the rest of the field in each discipline.

You can see the huge disparity in Perth - being in the top 4% of bikers, but top 25% and 33% in the swim and run respectively (though the swim stats are skewed by all the Perth Stingrays who participated in the event), whereas by the end of the season in Brockville things are a little more even. No real surprises here, my run is consistently poor.

But this stat measures stand-alone performances - there are triathletes who are very good swimmers, for example, that finish way down in the standings. This table shows where I rank in each discipline, but not really how that might relate to the overall race.

So here's another table where I took an average of what the top 3 racers got in each leg of the race. I'm setting a goal next year of making the overall podium, so these are the performances I'll need to approach. I then took what your average podium finisher got and compared it what what I got, effectively showing how much time I was losing to the race leaders in each leg.

What's interesting is that the time I'm giving up is surprisingly even (and in Perth I put in a better bike split than the average top 3 finisher so actually gained time) especially in Smiths Falls and National Capital. But I am losing the most time in the run, as expected.

Which brings me to the offseason game-plan.

Swim
I'm a decent enough swimmer, and I know that without swimming with a masters group or getting some sort of coaching, and certainly with the limited swim volume I'm able to put in, I will likely plateau pretty soon if I haven't already. So be it. With two young kids at home and a demanding job (and living a considerable distance from a pool) I'll make do with what I have. Overall I've been happy with my swim, and over the offseason I expect to make minimal gains.

Bike
My strongest discipline, but certainly room for improvement. I'm especially wondering whether its possible that I overbiked the 1000 Islands course, which led to my implosion on the run. With only one solid year of bike training I know there are still gains to be made, and I know that improvements in bike fitness will help me to be fresher for the run. My plan is have a more structured training schedule this winter and a more exact approach to periodization, so my plan is to go the TrainerRoad route, and to get a power meter. The power meter will obviously be useful for training but also for pacing when it comes time to race.

Run
This is where I really need to improve, and I think where there's the most potential for gains. If I could have run a 50min 10K in Brockville I'd have made the top 5, and just under 45min would have put me in the top 3. 45 minutes is not a super fast 10K, and I'd like to think that with enough work I can get there for next season. Step 1 is to focus almost exclusively on the run until December. I'm going to target a road race sometime in October and at this point am looking at a 10K with the goal of trying to get to 45min. May not be all that realistic, but I've never done a stand-alone 10K (or even a 5K) so I don't have much of a baseline. Holding 4:30/km for 10K does seem attainable to me though.

I'm already excited about next Tri season, but that is a long way off, so it's nice to have shorter-term goals to keep me motivated.

Reflections on the season

Overall I'm happy with how my first real triathlon season went. As 2015 began I hoped to make an Age Group podium at some point in the season, and set that as a broad goal. 4 races later, and 4 AG wins has to count as a successful season. I'm still a little irked at getting passed in the last 100m at Smiths Falls to bump me out of the top 10 (that would put me in the top 10 in every race) but all of this would have been more than satisfying back in January when I started my training plan.

Melissa and I talked about this a few times, and this season really has been a team effort. I could not have done this without the love and support of my amazing wife Melissa, so any successes I've had belong to her as much as to me.

I also want to thank my daughters Lily and Nora for inspiring this season. Wanting to set a good example for them, and wanting to make sure that I'll be around to see them grow up and start families of their own is what motivated me to take this on.

A few other thanks yous:
- As expected, the bike was my strongest discipline, and thanks are due to Dan (RIP) for the mag-trainer which allowed me to have a productive winter suffering in the basement, and to Jesse at Bushtukah for the Retul fit and help getting a good price on the right fitting bike.
- I didn't expect to be consistently near the front in the swim, but I made great strides this season despite limited pool time and having not really swam since I was like 13. Thanks go to Bo Simpson out in Calgary for his mentorship and helping me get the most bang-for-buck in the pool.
- My run was terrible, but given where I started from the season is a success. I achieved my goals making it through the season without getting derailed by injury, and being able to race 10km. Getting a head start on the season with a treadmill was instrumental in that, and I owe mom and dad a thanks for lending me theirs.

Thoughts on the off-season and next year to come later.