Internal Mono(b)log

firstoffthebike.com – Tri 101 – Ironman Lessons.

A great list of things to keep in mind when racing Iron distance.

Tomorrow I’m dropping my P3C off at Blacksmith Cycles so they can pull my Quarq, saddle, pedals and put them on my new ride: a 2012 Storck Aero 2is DI2!!!

I have to say I’m PRETTY FREAKING EXCITED!!!

This is one sweet bike.  Stiff and responsive with enough give that you aren’t vibrated out of the saddle on long rides.  With my wheels, Quarq, Look pedals, ISM saddle and Speedfil hydration on the frame it’ll look a bit different than this image (and yes I’ll post baby pictures 🙂 ) but you get the idea.

Saturday in Toronto is supposed to be super nice, but I’m going to be on the trainer with my new ride.  I’ve been off my bike for 10 days (been away) and so Saturday will be another run at the IM New Orleans course punctuated with stops to tweak the fit on the new ride.

So exciting!

Oh, and if you’d like a used Cervelo P3C 54cm with an upgraded fork and upgraded brakes (zero gravity), lets talk.  I can build it SRAM Red, or Shimano Dura Ace.  With or without a power meter.  With no pedals, speedplay pedals, or look carbon classics.  I’m also willing to part it out if that’s more attractive.

In my home made nutrition experimentation vein here’s experiment #2:

Peanut Butter’n’Banana Energy Bites

• 250g dates
• 50g dry roasted unsalted peanuts
• 50g banana chips
• 10g chia seeds
• 1/4 tsp salt

Pulse peanuts and banana chips in food processor until finely chopped.  With the food processor running, add about 1/2 of the dates, then the chia seeds and salt and finally the rest of the dates.  When everything is well chopped and mixed, spread small bar shapes (if you make 9 bars they divide easily into 36 bites) on parchment or a teflex sheet and put in the dehydrator for about 2-3 hours, flip and dehydrate for another 2-3 hours, then place on a normal dehydrator grill for a final 2-3 hours.  Let cool, then cut the bars to produce 36 mini-bars (bites).

Delish and best yet my gut seems to tolerate them well too.  Enjoy!

This review has been a long time in the offing.  I’ve been putting off swimming with fins because I’ve been babying my shin splint.  The splint is under control and rarely bugging me these days, so I put in some km with these 2 different fins to get a feel for each of them and specifically how they compare and contrast.

Zoomers Gold

The Finis Zoomer Gold is a pretty great training fin for building leg strength, and for developing a shorter and more powerful kick when swimming freestyle, back or fly.  The Gold, however, doesn’t really lend itself well to breaststroke.  The Golds feature a full foot pocket with open toe.  It’s made of solid rubber and is pretty stiff but has a little give.  I found that the Golds generated hot-spots where my toes exited the foot pockets – at least until the fins were broken in a bit.  Perhaps with swim socks or a slightly larger size this wouldn’t have been an issue, unsure.

Positive Drive Fins

The Positive Drive Fins (PDFs) are a rethinking of the typical swim fin shape and design.   The foot pocket and heel strap are very comfortable and the closed toe helps transfer more power to the fin.  The fin is not floppy, but is pretty flexible.  The foot pocket is asymmetrically set into the fin encouraging a “toe in” propulsive kick.  The fin design also lends itself well to all strokes.

The closed toe, flex, foot pocket asymmetry and size of the propulsive surface really drives your legs to work hard.  A couple of hundred meters with these guys and my legs were really feeling it.

A Fin Is a Fin, Right?

Well… no, not right.  Sure, almost any fin will help push you through the water, but we aren’t snorkelling or scuba diving here, we’re training!

Many fins on the market have very large propulsive surfaces compared to either of these fins, but unless you’re training in a 50m pool, that much propulsion in the water is almost contrary to what you want.  You want to encourage short powerful kicks, good body position, ankle flexion and good kick technique.  Both of these fins excel in these aspects with some notable differences:

Foot pocket design:  I find the PDFs more comfortable.  I also really notice the pocket asymmetry and improved power transfer.  I only really swim freestyle, but the design lending itself to other strokes could be a big benefit to more rounded swimmers.

Propulsion: I feel that the PDFs provide a little more propulsion than the Golds, and provide a harder leg workout.  This may be a drawback in a smaller pool or a plus if you’re working your leg strength.

Summary

These are both great training fins.  Given that I only swim freestyle, either can happily have a good home in my swim bag.  In the end, if I could only choose 1 pair, I’d lean toward the Positive Drive Fins because of the asymmetry and heavier workout than I got with the Golds.  Who knows: one day I may even learn fly 🙂

Just wanted to put up a quick shout-out for the folks at Running Room in LIberty Village.

This store has been open for less than a year, but already feels like home! The Running Room staff are generally good, but the manager and staff at this location are amazing! They regularly go out of their way to make sure I have what I need. The shop is small but really well stocked and able to get anything they don’t have, but Running Room carries, quickly.

If you drop by, tell them Rick sent you and say hi for me 🙂

It’s no secret that I love FirstEndurance’s nutrition and supplement products.  I’ve raved about them here a lot.   Recently in my training and racing, especially where I need to carry a lot of calories in a small space, I’ve been doing something new (for me):  I’ve been diluting a couple of flasks of Liquid Shot (400 calories/flask) with water in a water bottle on the bike.

In a 750ml water bottle, the double-flask of liquid shot diluted with water takes on a milk-shake-like consistency that while being easy to pull up through the straw in a aero-bar-mounted drink system (Torhans or the ilke), is thick enough that it doesn’t spray everywhere when you finish drinking from the straw or hit every bump in the road.

This approach also works better than my previous choices (4 scoops of carbo-pro + 4 scoops of EFS drink in water) because it can be difficult to get all that powder to dissolve in water, but EFS Liquid Shot is already liquid form, so diluting it does not present the same sort of challenge.  Also with the high concentration of amino acids and electrolytes in EFS products, I don’t need to worry about carrying salt pills and have never cramped (even in the crazy heat/humidity recently in Panama).

On my run, I still carry a flask of Liquid Shot and EFS drink in my Fuel Belt.  On the bike, especially for long rides where I’m burning about 700calories/hour, having the ability to easily carry 1600-2400 calories of Liquid Shot is a big win!

Just before I went to Panama a box containing a beta unit of the Sportiiiis Heads Up Display for Athletes arrived at my door.  The timing couldn’t have been better for me to give the device a thorough testing in my lead up and racing in Ironman 70.3 Panama.

I’m happy to say that the Sportiiiis are… well… AWESOME!  They performed flawlessly in both my training in Panama and racing.

When I first unpacked the unit and installed the software, I experienced a few early-release glitches with the software/firmware and a corruption of the audio prompting on the device.  A subsequent update of the firmware and software resolved these problems, polished the desktop software and since then I’ve had absolutely no issues with the device.

Using the desktop software you can set target ranges for power, cadence, heart rate and speed for bike and run modes.  Using the capacitive touch button and a tap-selector as your 2 input methods you can change what the unit is reporting, the mode or get an immediate report of your current output in the sensor it’s monitoring.

Because of the minimalistic interface it takes a little practice and memory work to remember how to interact with the Sportiiiis, to change modes and settings.  I, also, initially found the touch sensor a bit difficult to find and interact with consistently, but like drinking from a water bottle when riding, it just takes a little practice and development of personal style 😉

The Sportiiiis reports to you in 2 outputs: a row of 5 7 coloured LEDs on the boom in your peripheral view and also through a mini-speaker at the back of the unit.  The speaker alerts you audibly if you’re out of zone and, at a configurable interval, reports the values for all the sensors the Sportiiiis is monitoring.

The Sportiiiis generated a fair bit of interest during IMPanama.  I showed them to a number of athletes and a couple of the race officials.  The race officials initially thought that they may be illegal because they thought that the Sportiiiis would act as a pace coach (beeping off a cadence to take), but once I explained to them that the sportiiiis were just a reporting device (like a Garmin watch), and they were satisfied that the speaker did not obscure your hearing or prevent any kind of coaching advise or safety hazard, they were happy with the Sportiiiis and thought they were pretty neat!  [yes that was a bit of a tense few minutes of explanation 🙂 ]

One thing I really love about the Sportiiiis is that my Garmin becomes a data recorder and the Sportiiiis replace it for current output display.  This gives me 2 things: race-day backup (if the Sportiiiis or Garmin crap-out during a race, I still have the other for pacing/monitoring output), not having to take my eyes off the road when riding or running to find, focus on and process the information on the little Garmin display.  Both big plusses in my books.  [Edit: Also 4iiiis tells me that in the future they’ll be recording data from the various ANT+ tethered devices and be able to upload that data to sites like TrainingPeaks.com (that’s pretty neat!).]

Sportiiiis are now available from their website, I love them, and think that anyone who trains and/or races based on data rather than feel will love them too!

Rode a new road today, no speed bumps on this one and closer to home.  It’s a nice road, a little narrow, but not heavily trafficked and with very few potholes.  It climbs from the highway up into the nearby mountains.

No, I didn’t go bike mountain climbing today, that’s not what a taper is made of, but I did ride down and up the foothills… twice.  The 1st time down was lotsa fun!  Fast! Oh my fast.  The 2nd time, I got stuck behind a tractor trailer pulling a massive backhoe and belching black diesel death clouds as it went.  Course, I still had to do the climb, but didn’t get the super-fun of the descent.  Oh well 🙂

I rode with the GoPro again, some nice scenery on this ride and the camera angle is a bit better.   I’m uploading now, but it says 5 hrs to go (yea not great bandwidth down here).  I’ll post a followup with the youtube link when its done (probably in the morning).

Some things I’ve found about the Torhans 30oz system that I have:

• the lids need a way to secure them to the bottle or straw in case they pop off the top (yea it happened today, check the video)
• the straw needs a bite valve – until the fluid level is down 50% you risk wearing a spray of your hydration whenever you take a drink
• the aero cowling on the straw needs a dab of glue to stay on the bottle
• don’t fill it until you’re planning to immediately put it on the bike (or fill it after you install it) because there’s no way to stand it up
• (but with all these “issues”…) having a straw in my face is way more efficient and probable way to for me to onboard hydration.  I’m using the Torhans for fuel and the speedfil for water.   I’ll probably put about 800 calories in the Torhans and have a bottle behind my saddle with another similar 800 calorie bottle to refill the Torhans with.

Did some speed work in the pool today.  Didn’t get to swimming until later in the day and the ocean was crazy, the pool was definitely a winner.  Had it to myself and it was easy to judge sprint lengths, etc.

Mid-day today was groomin’ time.  Went in and got plucked like a Christmas Goose.  I’m now all smooth, aero and hydro-dynamic. LOL.  No really… I felt smoother and “slicker” in the water tonight.  Maybe its psychosomatic, but I’ll take every edge I can get 😉  Today was also the day that I had planned and scheduled my toe nail trim.

I scheduled my toe nail trim?!  You bet!  Ever trim your nails a bit too close and have a tender toe for days?  Ok, imagine having that tender toe, trapped in a cycling shoe, or running shoe for hours.  Not fun?  You bet!  So, what do you do?  You trim your nails early so that on race day, if you were too aggressive, you’re not suffering.  Yea this is me leaving little to chance.  But hey!  Be prepared, eh? 🙂

Another great article from Joe Friel on the importance of training on the bike with power.

Joe Friel – More on Power Meters.

And, by the way, I still have a power meter for sale.  Leave me a comment with your contact info if you’re interested.

I’ve been here for a few days and have done some training, hit the grocery, and visited with my friends, Richard and Jamuna, but haven’t really been out exploring yet.  Tomorrow I’ll be in Panama City for a 10k race in the morning and take in some of the city sites and sounds in the afternoon.

What I have seen of Panama, I’ve really liked.  The people are friendly and industrious. The economy is booming, signs of crazy growth are everywhere, but the cost of living is still pretty low.  Best, for me, is the climate.  Sunny, warm, breezy, a bit humid but manageable. So far, absolutely loving my stay here.

I’ll post more “Impressions of Panama” toward the end of the trip as I have a chance to see, do, and experience more of what Panama has to offer.

Heat acclimatization has been going well.  Swam in the ocean yesterday at the beach off Playa Coronado (where I’m staying). Here’s a youtube vid of the beach:

I’m back there today and pretty much daily until Friday.

Yesterday I did another training ride out to Punta Chame along a country road.  It’s a nice ride and cranking along on the bike you don’t feel the heat or humidity.   I wore a GoPro camera as a helmet cam and shot the ride, unfortunately the camera’s angle is a bit low so the scenery isn’t as well depicted as I’d like.  I edited the 1.5 hrs down to about 12 minutes.  I’ll post the youtube link once it’s finished uploading.

This morning I did my 1st shakeout run since arriving.  Just a quick 30 minute run.  I went early in the day (8am) and OH MY GOD!  Heat management during tomorrow’s 10k and the 12th’s 20k is going to be SUPER important.  I was a bit surprised, having been misled by the cooling effect of the wind while cycling, just how hot it was.  Sponges, hydration and nutrition are going to be key on both Sundays.

I’ve also had a chance to do a shakeout of the Sportiiiis.  I took them on yesterday’s bike ride and this morning’s run.

On the bike, I had it monitoring primarily my power and during my quick run this morning, pulse.  Just a teaser for now, more detailed review to come, but quckly: ME LIKEY!  This device is everything it’s promised to be.  It seems to work very well and is quite configurable (I need to spend some time, having now used it a bit, to tweak it more to my liking).   Like I said, just a teaser for now.  Stay tuned.