Lungs

Vitamin D ' may be the key for healthy lungs but Lung function is not the weak link in endurance performance.

Quadrant Analysis

Note to self: Read Dr. Coggan's Quadrant Analysis paper. I sure wish he would start a blog.

I find the light and work it, work it, work it.

Bicycle Lights and Generators: "Schmidt Nabendynamo"

I find the light and work it, work it, work it.
-- Janice Dickinson

10/2004 - 12/2005

Andrew Coggan writes: Optimum weekly TSS for IM - The Tri Forum: "W/o going into all the details, caveats, etc., based on feedback from beta testers of 'TSTWKT' somewhere in the range of 100-150 TSS/d, or 700-1050 TSS/wk, seems to represent the optimal training load, at least for most people."

So, here's a chart w/ depicting my TSS (the solid line) and my ride Volume (dshed line) since October of 2004. This is loose approximation because the values used for my Functional Threshold have been sketchy and there have been several occasions where I was unable to record a ride.

Optimum weekly TSS for IM - The Tri Forum

Andrew Coggan writes: Optimum weekly TSS for IM - The Tri Forum: "W/o going into all the details, caveats, etc., based on feedback from beta testers of 'TSTWKT' (see: http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=3331) somewhere in the range of 100-150 TSS/d, or 700-1050 TSS/wk, seems to represent the optimal training load, at least for most people."

Can I go run now?

 

Someone set up us the bonk!

Feeling much better today. The morning treadmill session went well (7 miles) and my case of DOMS has improved significantly. It's too bad that I missed my long run this week but you live and learn. So, what did I learn?

• The long run is critical and needs to be the focus of my run program. I can't let other runs interfere with my ability to perform my long run. I need to fresh, focused, and fueled.

• I must fuel properly to train at an increasingly volume. My "bonk" cycle looks like this: put in a big day, eat little, repeat until I freak out and my body stops responding.
  
• My body wants to train at the same time everyday. When I switched my daily run to the early morning, my pace slowed and my ability to focus vanished. After 3 days, I seem to be adjusting.
  
• Lifting weights should be done w/ caution. Duh!
  
• When I feel sluggish and tired, it's time for a recovery ride.
  

Online Sports Nutrition Journal

More info to chew on. What a day. Will the flood of information every end. I'm starting to think that success in the information age will be determined by attention span.

Anyway. Here's an abstract about the JISSN.

Welcome to Sports Nutrition Society: "The Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (JISSN), formerly known as the Sports Nutrition Review Journal, is a peer-reviewed journal that covers various aspects of sports nutrition, supplementation, exercise metabolism, and/or scientific policies related to sports nutrition. "

Attention Economics

Herbert Simon:

"Attention economics is an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems."

"...many designers of information systems incorrectly represented their design problem as information scarcity rather than attention scarcity, and as a result they built systems that excelled at providing more and more information to people, when what was really needed were systems that excelled at filtering out unimportant or irrelevant information."

gBlog: Choose Wisely

gBlog: Choose Wisely: "Molina once told me that was the great thing about triathlon -- you truly can out work your competition. My experience is that it's the way in most things, providing we define success correctly."

Music to my ears! I really hope this is true because my genes suck!

Allen Lim's power range data. Interesting 

Link List

Wattage List
Slowtwitch Forum
Cycling Forums
Cycling Peaks Power 411
Peak Performance Online
Velonews
USDA Nutrient Data
Mapleleaf Cycling Camp
Technorati

Training Stress Score

Cycling Peaks gave yesterday's ride a TSS of 504. Looks like today is a recovery day.

Seven Deadly Sins

From Andy Coggan:

Seven deadly sins...er, ways of determining your functional threshold power (roughly in
order of increasing certainty):

1) from inspection of a ride file.
2) from power distribution profile from multiple rides.
3) from blood lactate measurements (better or worse, depending on how it
is done).
4) based on normalized power from a hard ~1 h race.
5) using critical power testing and analysis.
6) from the power that you can routinely generate during long intervals
done in training.
7) from the average power during a ~1 h TT (the best predictor of
performance is performance itself).

Note the key words "hard", "routinely", and "average" in methods 4, 6,
and 7...

Jan Looks Strong.

Jan is looking strong this year!

Now playing: System of a Down - Needles

Bik Schedule

Monday 1.5 hours
1.5 @ < 200

Tuesday 2.0 hours
3 * 8’ on the flats @ 225-235 watts
6 * 2’ SFR w/ 2-2.5’ of Rest. Every week add 30” until 6 * 5’

Wednesday 3 Hours
Flats
30’ warmup @ 3 * 15’ @ ME (225 - 235) 95 rpm
1 * 20’ @ LE (200 - 225) 100 rpm
Hills
2 * 15 @ (200-220) 80 rpm
4 * 5 @ (250-260) 75-80 rpm w/ 5-8 min of rest

Thursday 1.5 Hours
< 200 watts

Friday 1.5 Hours
< 200 watts

Saturday
Group Ride

Sunday 3 Hour or Group Ride
1 hour < 200 watts
Flats 3 * 10’ ME (225-235 watts) @ 95 RPM on Flats/ 3-5’ rest
Hills 3 * 8’ @ 235-250 watts, Rest 6-1-‘

Race day wheels

How cool is this? You can rent wheels from these guys.

Cycling Base

I wonder where most of my training is happening.

So, there's this Hottest Legs contest going on over at slowtwitch... 

Tour of Flanders

Here's a toast to Tom Boonen's victory at tour of Flanders. Now, I suggest that you, dear reader, don't do what I am doing; imbibing heavy drink after two days of heavy training.

Bad Boy Beach Bike

I needed a bike to ride to the beach and this is the one I picked.
Nice, no? It's the complete antithesis of my tri bike.

 

Bike Lust

I'm developing a serious bike addiction. I'm lusting after these old sears bikes and trolling craigs list multiple times a day looking for beach cruisers.

Miss Anne Thrope

Anyone know the story behind the news group posts of Miss Anne Thorpe? I really get a kick out of his/hers posts. The name is obviously a play on the word misanthrope.

Here's a small sample of "her" posts:


Golf

Golf disappointing? Did you really think that watching people
push balls into holes was going to be compelling?

Running

And if Miss Anne, while in her truck, does see that jogging silly shmuck, the rest
of the day will then be spent, cleaning the dna from the trucks front vent.

Running is something you do when you're being chased. What you all do
is called jogging. And don't take it personally when I use the term
"jogger". I don't mean it as an insult.....it's just that the other
words I was using were so filthy.

Ego Water Bottle

Sexy.

Injury Progress

I ran for 30 minutes on the treadmill tonight. Never felt any heal pain. I did, however, feel some tightness in my groin and some transient pains in my ankle. I suspect these are normal given the time I took off due to the Achilles injury. I never thought I’d be so happy to run on a dreadmill.

First Open Water Swim of the Season

I'm doing my first open water swim of the season today. I hope the weather holds and that the seas don't get to rough. Martin will be swimming with me; so if I run into any trouble, help should be close by. Not sure what route we're gonna take but we might start from the beach in Capitola and swim to the cement ship. Dunno, yet.

Training Status

Here's a quick status report for the month of February.

Total Training Hours: 60.95 hrs.

My training went really well this month. My weight is down to 165 lbs and all indications are that it will continue to drop as I continue to increase my run volume. That means I am definitely on track to reach 160 by Wildflower and I might just make 150 in time for Escape from Alcatraz.

Swim: 7.3 hrs

Had a coach look at my stroke and was pleasantly surprised that there is nothing glaringly wrong. I occasionally drop my elbow when I am tired but everything else looks okay.

Bike: 27.5 hrs

I’m generating more watts and climbing better. For example, during one training ride I put out 253 watts (normalized power) for 30 minutes. Last year I was lucky to put out 200.

Run: 20.2 hrs
My recent move to Asics DS Trainers has gone well and the hip pain I've been suffering is subsiding. I know that it's not a lot for some folks, but I'm very happy with the 133 miles I put in this month. After all, during the first of the month it looked like I might be having a major injury related setback. I'm really lucky to be able to run at all.

My pace and duration of runs has seen improvement as well. Now I am running an ~8:30 pace @ 70% HRR. So that's, 8:30 @ 140 BPM.

I've also made some progress on the LSD front as I've increased my long run to 2 hours. My longest being 2:20.
Strength Training: 5.95 hrs
I’m seeing improvements in my core strength and this is translating well to actual performance.

I'm gonna need a road bike and this one matches my P3.  

I hear that the race ends w/ a gun shot to the head.