Aquathon #4

Last night was the 4th out of 5 aquathons, and I had a pretty good night. I haven't done a whole lot this week, so I didn't really know what to expect.

I positioned myself in a spot where I thought I might get beat up a bit on the swim figuring that's what Ironman is going to be like and I want to get used to it. The first few minutes were a little rough as we all fought for position and I got kicked and ran into a lot, but nothing too bad. It doesn't scare me anymore when that happens, but I do find it very frustrating and I need to remember to stay calm and not waste energy because it doesn't take that long for the field to thin out.

At the last aquathon I didn't wear my wetsuit and my swim was quite a bit longer than usual (the course was a tad long, I heard). Apparently, wetsuits make a huge difference. This time I wore my wetsuit and set my fastest swim time by 1 second.

The run went well, although it's always a struggle the first mile and a half as I try to settle down and get into a rhythm. My heart rate is so high after the swim that it's really hard to run right after coming out of the water.

I was nervous about the run because I've had some knee pain and IT band tightness this week so I was afraid of an injury, but I felt really good during and after the run. The reason: I wore my Zoots instead of my new Sauconys. I never have problems with shoes that don't have any support (the Zoots offer about as much support as a pair of socks - yet I ran 18 miles in them and felt fine), but I tend to have problems with shoes that add support and try to limit pronation and my Sauconys have a minimal amount of support, but apparently enough to give me issues. So I ordered a pair of Saucony Rides, the same shoe I have now without support. I can still use the Sauconys I just bought, but I'll save them for short runs this winter. They shouldn't give me problems then, and even if they do I can afford a little time off in the winter.

I believe your feet need to pronate a little because it's natural and it frustrates me to no end that running stores do everything they can to get you in a pair of shoes that stabilize your feet and eliminate over pronation. If you're an excessive over pronator (sounds like a character flaw, doesn't it?) then you probably need some stability shoes, but if you're a mild over pronator then I think you should stick with neutral shoes....my opinion.

Anyway, I came close to my best time overall and finished with my best finish ever - 8th place - so I'm really happy with how the aquathon went. Mainly I'm really happy and relieved to finish the run with no injuries or pain. That's very encouraging and gives me a lot of confidence for the Ironman.

The last aquathon is 4 days after the Ironman (rescheduled from a cancellation). I wanted to take that whole week off, but if I can put in a good finish I might take a top 3 spot in the M30-39 division for the series and score some bling. I'm a sucker for awards, so I have to go and give it my all. It's gonna hurt, but at least I won't need to worry about injuries. I think the swim will be fine, but the run might be a death march.

Janesville Race Against Racism 5K

We woke up to a light rain, and thought it was going to be another crappy day for a 5K...just like the 5K in Beloit. The rain continued through registration, but stopped a few minutes before the start of the race and then the sun came out and the weather was great.

We were doing this race mainly as a training race for Cheri, because the Danskin triathlon is only a few weeks away. Unfortunately, she's been struggling with severe knee pain the past few weeks. The guys at the Endurance House suggested she work on her form and try to strengthen her quads with leg extensions and lunges. She's been doing the exercises and making progress, but we were both very worried that she might have to walk to the finish line. I gave her a few Ibuprofen to take before the race hoping that would hold off the pain so she could get in a good run.

For 2 years she's been trying to run a sub 25 minute 5K. She's been running stronger than ever, but we both figured this wasn't the day for a PR....wrong. Not only did she PR and run a 24:33 5K (7:54 pace), she dominated the dojo and won her age group....again. She only had a little knee pain so we think the strength training is helping (although I still want her to see the physical therapist).

My race went well. I ran a 19:22, a PR by a few seconds, and finished 2nd in my age group. Check out the trophies they handed out to the top 5 in every age group...

Pretty cool, huh?

If you're looking for a 5K to run in the Janesville area next year, be sure to put the Race Against Racism on your schedule. The course is flat, fast and certified. And the event is run by Tim Rutter, who does an excellent job running events. They're always very well organized with lots of goodies, like trophies and a ton of giveaways....and pancakes. Can't beat that.

Here are a few pictures from the Aquathon...

Me and Andy before the start.

The start.



The puppy that stole all of the attention. His name is Ambrose and he's 12 weeks old. He's a bullmastiff so he's going to be a big boy.

Misc

Fatigue: This is recovery week, and I've been trying to take it easy and recover but my legs feel really sluggish. Tomorrow is a rest day, so I'm hoping that will help and then next week is a week of base training so I think I'm going to keep the intensity down and see if that helps. It's a little frustrating because workouts that wouldn't normally make me sore are making my legs really tired and sore. I'm a little overtrained right now so I think I need to step back the intensity for a little bit.

Rockin the Rockport: Tuesday night Cheri and I swam at Rockport pool again and finally met the Wimmers, which was great. I stumbled onto their blogs a while ago and Cheri and I have been following their training and they've been doing a lot of the same events we are but we never run into them. Finally, we ran into them...it was bound to happen. Rockport is a great place to get in a good swim workout. It's kind of fun swimming in an outdoor pool, and being an Olympic size pool makes it a little tougher. I didn't realize how much of a difference that second of rest every 25 yards makes until I had to swim 50 meters before getting a breather. Good workout.

Swimfast: I'm still working with Mark at Swimfast and I can tell I'm making some progress. It gets frustrating sometimes because swimming is so much about technique and it takes a while to develop that. But Mark has been giving me a ton of great tips and I can tell that I'm starting to make progress. My left arm is mainly where I screw up my form so I need to do a lot of work on that...a lot of one-arm drills. He had me drop in on one of his open water classes so he could help me with my open water swimming, and he noticed that I tend to swing my arms out too much in open water and I'm wasting a ton of energy so he gave me some drills to work on to improve that. He's an incredible coach and I can tell he's going to help me take my swimming to the next level, and I think I might be able to hang with the lead pack one of these days. I just need some time to get the technique down.

Gun Show: Today at lunch I rode the gun show, which is part of the reason I'm so tired right now. Jordan rode with us today, and with him being one of the best cyclists in Wisconsin, the pace gets pretty fast. I was doing everything I could to hang on and stay with the group. Jordan works for Saris and they have several very fast riders, and they all work together better than we do so they can be tough to hang with. But I got in a good ride and hit my max heart rate, which I haven't done in a while. That hurt.

Aquathon: After work I ran the aquathon (swim/run). My goal was to improve on my swim, even if that meant I would have a bad run. I'm happy with my swim time, but I'm a little disappointed that I didn't do a good job getting into a group so I could get a good draft. I swam the whole thing alone. I started to the side of the main pack, and when people started to settle into a comfortable pace I ended up in a gap behind the lead pack and in front of the middle pack. The lead pack was too fast for me, so I just pushed as hard as I could and tried to make sure I held a good line so I didn't add unnecessary distance. My swim time was 14:38, almost 30 seconds faster than last time. It's an improvement, but I thought I could take more time off since I struggled a bit last time with the cold water. The run was brutal. My heartrate was really high from the swim and my legs were tired. I ran faster than I expected, but it was a struggle. My run time was 20:54, about 30 seconds slower than last time. My final time was 36:04 for 13th overall. I don't care about the run, but I really want to get my swim times down. I'm shooting for a sub 14 minute swim next time. Cheri came out and watched and took pictures. I'll post them later, although most of the pictures she took were of a puppy. I can't compete with the puppies.

Cheri's Knee: Cheri has been having a lot of knee pain when running lately, and one of the sponsors of the aquathon is a physical therapist so Cheri talked with him for a while. It turns out he's in Janesville twice a week so she's going to make an appointment and see if he can help her get over the pain so she can focus on her running again. I'm really glad she came out to watch because I've been trying to help her with her knee pain, and I have no clue what I'm doing. And I learned with my knee injury that self-diagnosis doesn't work.

Aquathon....Brrrrr....

Whew. What a day. It started with my first ride on a fixie. That's right. My new bike arrived, the Schwinn Madison.

If you've never ridden a fixie, it's quite an adventure. I almost got bucked off that thing a few times today. I don't have clipless pedals for it yet so I'm using the toe straps that came with it, and my left foot slipped out on the first hill and I tried to coast to get my foot back in and the bike bucked me up and almost threw me over the handlebars. Close call.

The second time was when I tried to coast over some gravel and it bucked me so hard it lifted me off the seat. I'm sure it was quite humorous to the cars driving by, but I didn't find it so amusing. Right now, I'm not really a fixie fan. I'm going to keep at it, but if I don't like it after a few more rides I'm going to flip the wheel and turn it into a single speed, which will lead to plenty of ridicule at work but that's okay.

After work was the first aquathon of the year....and my first open water swim of the season. If you're unfamiliar, an aquathon is a 1000 meter swim followed by a 5K run. I've never done one, so I didn't really have any expectations. I wanted to have a good swim (for me) and then take it easy on the run since I'm still sore from the half marathon (apparently, that half marathon was quite a beating on my quads because after an ice bath and 4 days of recovery they're still sore).

The weather wasn't looking good - high of 60 with a chance of severe thunderstorms. And the water temp was 58 degrees so it was a wetsuit mandatory event. I was kind of hoping for some serious storms to move in and wipe out the event so I wouldn't have to get in the water, but I also kind of wanted to go ahead with it because my first triathlon of the season is Sunday (Lake Mills) and I'm prone to panic attacks in open water so I wanted to get my first panic attack out of the way....and I did because the nasty weather held off and we got the race in. Just some light rain.

I expected the water to be really cold, but holy smokes was that cold. I went out for a short warm up (if you want to call it that) about 15 minutes before race time. It didn't bother me that much on my feet and legs. I guess the ice baths helped acclimate me to frigid water. And it wasn't as bad as I expected when it got to my chest. But putting my face in the water was when I felt the pain. It was really hard to breathe. I swam a bit and then went back to transition to put on a second swim cap hoping that might help keep me from losing too much body heat.

When the gun went off, I ran in and started swimming as soon as I could. The water was really shallow so a lot of people ran for quite a while, but I figured I came to swim so I might as well go for it. The water was super cold and I was having a tough time breathing...and then I had my first panic attack. I was really hoping I was over those, but obviously not. I swam side stroke for a bit to catch my breathe and then, more out of frustration than anything, decided I wasn't going to let open water get the best of me again and I started swimming. After a few minutes of being on the verge of another panic attack I finally settled down and found a decent rhythm, except I was getting a lot of pain in my left shoulder. That's been happening recently and I'm a little concerned about it. I don't know if it's an injury, overuse (doubtful since I haven't been swimming as much as I should lately), or poor form (likely).

Swim Time = 15:03

I came out of the water and into transition and experienced the other problem I have with swimming in open water - vertigo. I had my transition all set up so I could slip into my Zoots, grab my hat and go. I bent over to finish getting out of my wetsuit and...bam...I was on my butt. Everything was spinning. I pulled my wetsuit off and got into my shoes while sitting on the ground. Then I grabbed my hat and ran - a little sideways - out of transition.

Transition = 1:02

The run was interesting. I didn't realize my feet were numb until I started running. Wow, that's a really weird feeling. They felt like bricks. I wanted to take it easy and just have some fun on the run, and I did start a little on the easy side but as I started picking off runners I noticed my pace was gradually increasing. Eventually, I gained a little feeling in my feet and that's when I noticed the insole in my right shoe was bunched up under the arch of my foot so that was bothering until it slipped back into place at the 2 mile mark. I pushed pretty hard on the last mile and picked off a few more runners. Coming into the final 100 yards, I noticed the guy behind me was sprinting, trying to get me before the finish line. I thought, 'oh no you di'n't' (Cheri's favorite line) and I dropped the hammer. I held him off and even slipped past the guy in front of me one foot from the finish line. Everyone cheered, and he was so pissed he wouldn't even look at me after the race. Sorry, dude, but you gotta race all the way through the finish. Don't get mad at me because you backed off.

Run = 20:31

Total time = 36:34
Overall = 9th out of 72
Age Group = 3rd out of 12

I figured I would be a middle of the pack guy, especially since I planned to take it easy on the run, so I'm really happy to finish in the top 10. Now that I've done a competition that includes swimming, I have more motivation to get back to the pool and put some work in and improve. Motivation at the pool has been lacking lately, so this was a good thing. I'm pumped.