It’s next year

Many people still have not sat down and thought about what needs to be done to go faster in 2010. Do I need to swim more, bike more or run more? Where am I weak compared to my competitors? Do I need more long rides or runs? Maybe I should do more speed work?

Too many people will never answer these questions. Instead they will continue to do the same type of training as they did before. They will wonder why they still can’t run under 1:35 in a half ironman. They will stick with the same program that got them the results they are currently complaining about. Much to a planner’s delight.

Too many will take off the time between now and January. They will run half of what they normally would, which in itself, is half of what they really need. Their bike will sit collecting dust in the garage. Goggles will dry rot from sitting in the trunk for the next 2 months. Their idea of working out is running from the car to the coffee shop.

When their first race rolls around, they will wonder why they got their ass kicked (again) and roll out the excuses. I’ve been slacking on my training (duh, we see your race result), I’m doing base training, I haven’t done any speed work, my long run isn’t up there yet, my build phase starts next week.

Their failure to plan will be your benefit. Their inability to see the long view their demise. They will spend all season playing catch up, only to fall further behind. You can use their strengths to your advantage, while your weaknesses won’t benefit them.

Now compare this to an age group swim team. Their coach plans their season. They don’t take lots of time off transitioning from long course to short course and back to long course swim seasons. They swim 46-48 weeks per year. A week here, two weeks there are their only breaks. Then it’s back into the water. They address things that help them become more efficient early in the season, doing drills, high velocity swimming, working their turns. Making the little things that are crucial to success a habit. They then progress into their training program. Sprinters now train one way, distance swimmers another. Once the championship part of their season rolls around they start tapering. There is no panic about trying to squeeze in this type or that type of workout in. No distress because they have to race in three weeks. The work is done, it’s time to go fast. They don’t hope they have a good race, they just wonder how much faster it will be then early in the season.

2009 was the year where if you wanted an age group Kona slot, suddenly you needed to be 10-15 minutes faster to get that slot. Where elite run times dropped 2-3 minutes over the half distance. Before you could go around 9:30 and give yourself a chance to go to Kona. Now, you are so far out of it, you have to hope the roll down rolls down past the normal roll down roll down. If you are an elite, you used to be able to stay in the top 10 with a 1:22 run. Now all you are doing is counting butts as they pass you by. 53 is the new 55 for the IM swim.

Are you doing the work now to insure success? Are you objectively evaluating yourself, your training and your habits to make yourself a success? A good way to insure failure is to fail to plan. Fail to look at yourself in the mirror. Fail to tell yourself you need to change. Fail to have the balls to actually make those changes.

Now is next year. Now is the time to make the tough decisions about yourself, your life, what you want to accomplish in sport for 2010. Are you starting to do the little things that lead to success? Are you taking a big picture view with your planning? Have you even thought about getting out the door to train this year for next year? Is your rate of change outstripping everyone else’s? Or would you prefer counting people’s butts as they run by?

IMAZ part II

3 in all under 12hrs, all with PBs. Not too shabby. Great job guys!

Tim went 11:02.   Under a previous coach he was a DNF at his IM attempts.  Crossing the finish line, to me, is a PB for him since he has started Ironman races before.  I’m actually looking forward to his progress next season.  He has managed to knock off over 32 minutes from his half IM PB this year dropping that into the low 4:30’s.  I think next year he should be turning some heads around the AZ racing scene with people asking where he came from.  Sorry Tim, I didn’t get any pics of you that my thumb wasn’t in the way.

Jeff went 11:35. He overcame some late season injuries caused by a shoe switch which limited his run mileage during the final build. Jeff has a group of friends that are, or actually were of similar ability in IMs.  To quote one of them, “I’m going to have to put the wife and newborn up for adoption if I want to get close to his time”. When you drop over 65 minutes off your IM PB, you actually just have to de-friend your old ones and go get faster new friends. Or you become King among the commoners.

Jeff telling me what he really thinks

Billy was the third athlete going 10:14.  He went about 30 minutes faster then he ever had.  This was the first time he ever broke 4 hours in the Ironman marathon.  He got off the bike 7th in his AG, within striking distance of a Kona slot, but ultimately finished 14th in his AG.  I’ve know Billy know for over 12 years, train with him often and have been coaching him for just over three. It’s been nice watching him get faster and faster as he does the work season after season. Now at 45, he is faster then when he was 35 or 40!

Starting his 2nd loop

Finishing to a new Ironman PR

Ironman Arizona

3 athletes racing.  1 PB, 1 HUGE PB,  1 super HUGE PB.  Enough said…for now.

IM Florida

It’s barely over and already people are whining about drafting.  Look folks, drafting happens, it’s an accepted practice at all the big IM events. Some people will get dinged sure, but lets face it, those races are semi ITU races for many of the age groupers.

So what should you do if you see a big group?  Catch it or let it catch you.  Thats right, get with the group. Then sit the legal 3 bike lengths distance behind it. I have several power files showing drops of 10-40 watts with .5-2.0 mph increases in speed.  You want to race smart, thats smart racing.  Let some other schmuck do all the work.  Sit back, have a coke, eat a gel and laugh your ass off at everyone else.

You want to go to Kona? Then don’t be a hero trying to break away from the pack.  Ride 3 lengths behind, save your watts for the run and ride way faster then you would have by yourself.  Then, get off the bike and run people down. Accept your Kona slot and be the happiest, smartest racer on the podium.

But I can hear the screaming now.  This violates the spirit of triathlon blah blah and on and on.  Spirit?  Really? When you have 100 people per minute getting out of the water? Thats more then 1 per second.  How the heck are you going to fit that onto a bike course legally?  The spirit of the rule was violated when the race got that big. The RDs and WTC are the biggest hypocrites about it.  NO drafting. 2400 entries. NO drafting. 2400 entries.

Race smart within the rules.

Learning

Yesterday, I had the chance to go watch one of my athletes run in the Javelina Jundred Trail Race outside of Phoenix. She was doing 100k, which is a rather long way to run.  Typically I coach triathletes, bike racers and runners.  I’ve never coached ultra runners before that I can remember.

As a coach, I can watch athletes and pick out those that are shelled, over their heads, those that are looking fit, fresh and good even at 3+ hours into the event.  I staked out two different positions on the course. This allowed me to observe the same athletes 3-4 times through out the day.  You could really see people whose training had derailed, who were in survival shuffle, who was and was not going to make it.  Those who had been smart early and those who had not. Best of all you could watch the changes as the day rolled on.  Lurking in the staging area was really interesting as well. Some people made me wonder what they were thinking.

Today, as we chatted about yesterday, I realized from my notes both with her about her race and on my observations from the race, that there was a ton of info learned about ultra running.  More importantly, much of this info has application towards other events as well. It’s experiences like this that allow me to stick another few bricks onto my wall of knowledge.

It’s of my opinion that far too many coaches fail to absorb the learning these opportunities offer. Fail to assimilate what they observed. Fail to use they knowledge they have, to critically apply it to situations that are non specific to it.  It’s lessons such as these that allow me to see how far I’ve come as a coach over the last decade, how much I’ve learned in that time.

Soma Triathlon

How did Accelerate 3 athletes do at the Soma Half Ironman?  Not too shabby at all I’d say.

2 athletes racing. The final score?

2 half IM PB’s with 2 run PB’s by huge margins.

Tim was 3rd in his Ag, 19th OV and made an ENORMOUS leap forward in his performance slashing 23 minutes off his Half IM PB.  Did I mention he capped it off with a new PB on the run.

Jeff was 151st OV, 2 min faster then he has ever covered the half distance.  He only ran 7 minutes faster then ever before, including a bathroom break.

Those guys rode each of the three laps on the bike faster then the lap before.  Proper pacing = proper racing. I wonder how many athletes did that on the bike then backed it up with PB type runs?  My guess is that these guys had very little company in this category.

Great job guys!

Bittersweet

This weekend the Soma Triathlon takes place.  A big season ending half ironman here in AZ.  Typically THE end of the year race for many triathletes from around the country.  One that pulls in several fast age groupers.  Last year there were ~ 5 states represented in the top 6 age groupers.

Every athlete hates missing races, I’m no exception. It’s a fitting end to my season. One that was either really, really good or really, really bad.  So once again I’ll be heading to a race to watch instead of racing.

The Secret – Exposed

On a few of the tri chat boards yesterday during the IM Hawaii broadcast,  I saw several questions from people looking for what is IT that the pros do to get faster.  It seems that people think there is one thing that they do, one silver bullet that enables them to go so much faster then us mere mortals.  I figure it’s time to expose their secret, share it with the world, level the playing field, even the odds so to speak.  For the first time here is the secret exposed:

They train more, they train faster, they don’t look for the silver bullet.  They do the work, daily in training, so on race day they can reap the benefits of that work and go fast. It’s day after day after day after week after week after month after month after month after well hopefully you get the point.

Yes folks it’s that simple.  Do the work necessary in training, do it often, and the race results will follow.

I want to say thank you to Mimi.  That was the most reassuring hour I spent Friday morning confirming that the decision I was making was the correct decision for Gabi.

Thank you to everyone who emailed, texted, posted something and called yesterday.  It was uplifting and shocking how many people took time out of their day to expressed their sympathy.

Having to make an end of life decision is never easy. You leave the vet on Thursday night with your dog with the reassurances that if the blood work turns out well, the surgery will be short and easy back by 4:30pm for a few days recovery. Friday morning I dropped her off and an hour later got a phone call.  I saw the vets number pop up on my cell phone and before I could answer I knew the world I had know with Gabi was starting to implode.

Gabi somehow swallow a bottle cap. We are not sure if the bottle cap was the catalyst that caused her to eat only 10% of what she normally would and then the blood work found the liver disease or if the liver disease had progressed and the bottle cap was an incidental finding. There really was no great option to solve the problem. In fact solving the problem wasn’t a viable option.

I’ve always told myself that there is no reason to make my dog that has brought me so much joy and happiness through the years suffer.  It’s not fair to the dog just to allow me to have a few more days or a couple of weeks more with her, especially since she wouldn’t be eating and might have some stomach discomfort.

How do you tell a dog in 5 hours thank you for 12+ years of happiness? As usual we walked in the morning before going to the vets for her soon to be cancelled surgery.  After I got her from the vets late Friday morning to spend time with her and her to spend some time with Bridgette and Gravey, I took her and Bridgette to the wash to walk.  They could chase lizards and birds, although now they are both much older and more interested in sniffing then chasing. I was remembering all the times Gabi tried to catch lizards, how she would run after them, whining because she couldn’t catch them.  How do you compact 12 years of love and try to convey that in 300 or so minutes. I ended up pacing from the kitchen through the hallway to the bedroom back down the hallway to the kitchen where I made a U turn and repeated the process for a bit. I think I was freaking her, Bridgette and Gravey the cat out and I was freaked out.

Ultimately I brushed her, scrathed her hips since it made her wiggle to what ever side I was scratching.  If I did it long enough she would let out a bark of delight. We, all the animals and I, sat on the floor for about 30 minutes in a little group. It’s pretty rare that the four of us would just sit there all touching each other for that long. I fed them some extra bones, then I gave her a rawhide to chew on which she loved doing.  After a few hours she tired of that so she laid on the floor, licked her paws incessantly to get all the rawhide off of them and I cuddled up next to her, her body resting against me, my arm over her and I cried while she licked then slept for the next 75 minutes.

Finally I couldn’t stand being in the house anymore. I grabbed her leash, whistled for her come and she jumped into the backseat.  I drove her around a bit then made the turn towards the vets office.

I don’t know if she knew we were driving around so I could go put her down. I suspect she realized I was really, really upset. But the process is fairly quick and seemed really quiet for her.  I walked in to the vets and they immediately put me into a room, no waiting or even stopping at the front desk.  They told me to take as much time as I wanted.  She walked around sniffing the room, trying to open the door into the back of the office where the kennels and work areas are. I just pet her, buried my face into her neck and sobbed. Eventually I called the vet back.  After picking her up and putting her on the table, the vet explained how it would happen and asked me if I was ready.

Am I ready to put her down?  This is 12 years of having a foot rest while I sat at my desk, or if not petting her with my feet having to dodge her to get up from the chair.  This is the dog that was never more then 6 feet from me.  I still find myself looking down first before getting up so I don’t step on her. 12 years of walking, feeding, poop scooping (although she was a ferocious poop eater so maybe really just 8 years of pop scooping in aggregate), hiking Mt. Lemmon, watching her bounding through the farm field next to the house in Laveen chasing birds seeing her disappear under the brush then explode over the next row and disappear again, snuggling with her, playing tug of war, wrestling. Knowing I’d have someone to greet me at the door every time I came back from a run or came home from work or her wanting to be with me where ever I was in the house and yard, remembering how she would lay on top of the couch in the first house staring out the window once I left until I came home, thinking about the two weeks it took for her to actually bark after we adopted her. Remembering her whining when she was younger while failing to catch lizards in the wash, bounding through the bushes chasing birds, the battle of wills when we walked.  She was always straining against her leash with Bridgette snapping at her because she was getting tugged along as well. 12 years of petting her everyday, of her playing with her bone flipping it in the air then pouncing on it at night. Her and Bridgette wrestling, swimming after ducks, how she leaped out of the car, off the shore into water or off the bed. The way she breathed, the hu-hu sound of it, the way her ears flopped up and down when she walked and the way the tip of her tongue stuck out of her mouth just a bit.  How do you compact all those wonderful memories into a few short hours. Am I ready? Never, I’m still not.  I wanted her to live as long as I did so we could be put down at the same time.

The process goes quick, first they give her a sedative which puts her under like she was going for surgery.  I could feel her relax into me, as she slid onto her side.  She started to snore a bit and her eyes were not tracking movement, her breathing was steady and peaceful.  Then they administer the final shot. In about a minute she stopped breathing, I’m not really sure when or how. Suddenly I realized I couldn’t feel her chest rising up pressing into my body as I cradled her head and was halfway laying on top of her.  The vet put a stethoscope to her chest and said she has gone. I don’t know how long it took for me to let go of her, so I could pet her a little bit more for the last time.  Eventually I rang the buzzer so they could come get her unresponsive body, walking out, I touched the tip of her tongue one last time, gave her a rub on her neck, a kiss and rubbed her belly.

Goodbye Gabi

It’s hard to say goodbye to your dog.  What do you do when you know you only have 5 hours left? We walked through the wash with my other dog, I brushed her, sat on the floor petting her and took lots of pics.  All the changes I’m going to face without her.  No more tripping over her when I get up from the couch, dinner table or out of bed.  I won’t have to be careful opening the front door after my runs anymore.  She won’t be there laying against the door waiting for me to come home. No more cleaning up after her when I’d get home from a trip.  She won’t pee on the floor anymore because she is so excited to see me again.  If I got up from the couch and moved, she got up and moved with me.  Go to the bedroom, she followed me.  Go from there to the office, she went also. Walked in circles so did she. This is the dog who would lower her head and plow through someone to get to me to say hi because running around them would be to far out of the way.

I don’t want to be the pet owner that hangs onto their dog for too long.  There really is nothing that can be done, everything would be managing a terminal process.  Having her here would be great, I love my dog. But having her here and suffering would be horrible.  I’d rather her be put down with a few good weeks left rather then suffer for those extra weeks just so I could walk her again or have her wait for me to come back from my run. It really sucks, I’m going to miss her.

Goodbye Gabi.  I love you, thank you for suckering Mimi into making us adopt you.  I’m going to miss you, more then you realize.