JP’s Journey

We are heading up to Wildflower tomorrow. Well, almost. Actually we are driving up to Oxnard and staying in a hotel, then driving the rest of the way early Thursday morning. Our plan is to arrive by 10am or so, hoping that it’s early enough to get a decent camping spot. Two years ago, the last time we did this, we arrived in the late afternoon on Thursday and it seemed that we were on the tail end of the big traffic jam into the campground. We’ll see. 

There’s a bunch of packing to do tomorrow…our goal is to be on the road by 2 or 3. I’m sure we’ll sit in LA traffic, but there is really no way around that since we want the girls to get at least a 1/2 day of pre-school because they are missing Thursday as it is. I figure we pay way too much for pre-school as it is (a grand a month), I hate it when they miss a day, it feels like we’re throwing money out the door. Anyways, I digress.

Tonight I did a pre-race tune up workout, my regular Tuesday night track group at Carlsbad HS. There was a nice crowd tonight…much better than in December and January when we were lucky to have 6 people. On to the workout…

1 mile easy jog (8 min pace)

11 x 400 on 60s rest (should have been 12 but my calf was tight after 11 and I didn’t want to push it so close to a race) 

77 (164) 
74 (173) 
75 (173) 
74 (175) 
74 (178) 
73 (177) 
73 (179) 
74 (179) 
72 (185) 
73 (182) 
75 (178) 

1/2 mile cooldown, easy roughly 8 or 8:30 pace.

I mistakenly had auto lap on my Garmin turned off and wasn’t hitting the lap button, so I don’t have avg HR per internal. But I was able to capture max HR from the graph and it’s in parentheses. Not sure how valuable that data is other than to tell that the 72 on #9 was pretty much all out. 

I doubt I’ll get to posting tomorrow night and I won’t have Internet access over the weekend, so the next post will be a race report. Hopefully, it will be a good one!

Thanks for reading.

The picture above is my daughter, Caty, playing a little ball in the backyard. I love this pic, her focus on the ball is really striking to me. Now we just need to work on that right elbow.

Wildflower is only 4 days away and this week is filled with last minute to-do’s to make sure we’re ready for the trip. Right now, we’re still unsure if we are heading up Wednesday or Thursday. Either way, I still need to get all of our camping stuff ready. It’s going to be a busy week.

Speaking of busy…how about the life of a 4 year old! It’s interesting how much stuff opens up for kids once they turn 4. Caty just celebrated her 4th birthday and we’ve wasted no time in getting her schedule filled up. She started Karate and violin classes last week and did awesome at both. Her violin teacher was impressed that she could write the letters of the strings at such a young age. I was very proud! And she starts soccer on the 10th. Life is going to get hectic around here, as if it wasn’t hectic already.

Last week, training didn’t go quite as I planned. For some reason, I’ve had a mental block about going to the pool. Every time I plan on going to Masters, something has come up or I’ve simply just decided to hit the “snooze” button and sleep in. Strange.

I managed to get out for three rides, including a nice steady to hard effort on Thursday with Coach Mike. We’ve been doing a early morning 40-50 mile hilly mid-week ride for three weeks now, with a bit of intensity thrown in. Here’s the link to the ride this week if you’re curious. This is something I’m going to continue as long as my schedule allows it. It should get easier as the days get longer. I couldn’t ride Saturday morning as I had to take Caty to her martial arts class. The rest of the day was smoked with other family stuff so my only option was to ride my trainer after the girls went down to bed. So I get my trainer set up, my laptop plugged in for some entertainment and some water bottles ready. Pump up my rear tire and POP! Bear in mind, I had a flat on Thursday and a flat the previous Thursday as well…and I’m fresh out of tubes. Damn it! No ride for me.

Good thing I went for a short run earlier in the day or that would have been a zero in the ol’ logbook. Running all week went well, I ran every day, a total of 41 miles with lots of hills. Colt and I did a 10 miler on Sunday morning at 7:25 pace which felt super easy. Good thing we went early, even at 7am it was already hot out.

The family and I spent the rest of the day at the Encinitas Street Fair and at Moonlight Beach. I guess Friday’s shark attack had people spooked, because the beach was not very crowded. Nonetheless, we had fun.

A good week.

Today was a dark day for the San Diego triathlon community and indeed, the triathlon community at large. Dr. David Martin, a 66 year old retired veterinarian was killed today while swimming with a group of fellow Triathlon Club of San Diego triathletes off of Fletcher Cove in Solana Beach. He was attacked by a shark. Early reports are stating that the bite radius of the wounds and other evidence indicates that the shark was likely to be a Great White. Seals and sea lions in the area have been seen beaching themselves, which could be an indication that a large predator is in the area.

A terrible tragedy and my condolences go out to Dr. Martin’s family and friends. I understand he leaves behind  four children. While I didn’t know him personally, the tri community here in San Diego is pretty tight so I feel like I’ve lost a friend.

Dr. Martin…Rest in Peace.

A slight diversion from training and racing discussion today. Instead, here is a little something for all you Mac users out there. Don’t worry, it’s triathlon-related. If you have a Garmin and use a Mac you are probably disappointed with the Mac version of Garmin’s Training Center (hereafter referred to as GTC) software. Quite frankly, it sucks. I used a PC when I first picked up my Forerunner 305 and was fairly happy with the PC version of GTC. It’s nothing stupendous, but certainly it does the basics well. Graphing of pace, elevation, HR, along with integration with Google maps, etc. All good. But the Mac version is junk. All you get is a simple graph of your HR, elevation, pace…that’s ok. But the mapping function is worthless. No streets, no topography, no Google map integration. And isn’t the mapping why you bought a GPS in the first place?

When I bought my Mac and discovered just how terrible GTC was on the Mac, I immediately started looking for a replacement. I do upload most of my stuff to Motionbased.com, but I also like to keep an off-line copy of my data since I don’t always have Internet access. On an airplane for instance. And you never know when the Motion-based website will go kaput (it’s soon going to be merged with GarminConnect, btw).

I did some Google searching and found Ascent. This program rocks. It’s not freeware, there is a one-time license fee of $35. But it has all the features you could ask for in a GPS-enabled training diary. (Disclaimer: I haven’t used TrainingPeaks, which supports GPS uploads also, so I have no idea how Ascent compares to that product.)

Within each activity you can track all types of data, including activity type (run, bike, x-country ski, dog sled…whatever), equipment (road bike, Newton shoes, tricycle, Crocs, bare feet, etc.), event type (race, training), weather, body weight, disposition (how you felt-OK, crappy, wonderful, high as a kite), and effort (easy, moderate, gut-wrenching). Each field has an ‘edit list’ option so you can add in your own customized choices. There are also two custom fields so if there is some other relevant data point you want to keep track of, you can easily do it. I personally don’t use this feature to its fullest potential, but it’s pretty nifty nonetheless.

HR, elevation, pace graphing is very nice. You can select individual laps from a pull-down menu so you can over-analyze to your heart’s content. In all seriousness, this is pretty handy for a track workout when you want to see how your HR changed during a single lap (an 800 interval, for example). And in combination with the Forerunner’s auto-lap feature, well…let’s just say you could waste a lot of hours geeking out over the data from your last long run. Hypothetically, of course.

The mapping function is what really sets this apart from GTC. One very cool thing is the ability to color-code your maps with user-defined zones. For example, you can set it up so your route will show up in red if you are running under 7 min/mile pace, green if you are running 7:01-7:30 pace, blue 7:31-8:00 pace…etc, etc. Similarly, you can choose from a pull-down menu to show different color coding for speed, gradiant, altitude, HR zone, even cadence. There is also a pull-down menu so you can see a simple road map, or a topographic, aerial, or hybrid view of your map.

And one feature I really think is cool; within the map as well as the graph screen, there is a pull-down menu where you can directly access all of your saved activity, so you don’t have to go back to the diary screen to check out the map from a different activity. After looking at today’s run, you want to take a look at your run from 2 months ago? No problem, simply got to the pull-down and its right there.

Finally, you can also open your route maps in Google Earth directly from the application (no exporting necessary).

Another great feature is Ascent’s animation engine. From either the map screen or the elevation/pace/chart you can run an animation of your progress along your GPS route. There is a ‘heads-up’ display that shows the HR, pace, elevation and HR zone data for that particular moment in time.

And most importantly getting your data from your device into the application itself is idiot-proof. Simply plug your Garmin into your computer, click ‘Sync GPS‘ from the File menu and ‘voila’, your activities will show up in your main diary screen. If you are migrating from GTC, you can import the .tcx files as well. Easy peasy.

In the interest of full disclosure, my only complaint is that the elevation change data is somewhat suspect…there is a pretty large discrepancy between what I get from Motion-based and what I get from Ascent. My understanding based on what I’ve read is that MB is pretty accurate, so I tend to trust that data a bit more. That said, Ascent is a great tool and has helped me get a lot more out of my GPS device.

Here are some screen shots (click to enlarge):

The main diary screen:

Route map:

Elevation/HR/Pace chart:

I’m sure that I’m missing some of the features of this software tool. But, by all means…download the free trial and give it a whirl for yourself.

Holy crap, Wildflower is in two weeks!

I just finished licking my wounds from Oceanside and BOOM! It’s already time to start thinking about Wildflower. Of course, I’ve been preparing for Wildflower…but it hadn’t really sunk in how soon it really is.

A few nights ago, my bud Colt came over for some steaks and beers to share some of his experience from his five successful trips around the Wildflower course. All I heard were things like “Nasty Grade” and “The Pit”. 6K ft of climbing on the bike followed by a leg-crushing 1700 ft of climbing on the run. Add in some afternoon heat and it could be a very tough day out there. His advice: the race begins at the top of Nasty Grade. Stay conservative until then…

I’ve been in Wildflower once before…2 years ago. But all I did was the Olympic distance course. And that was tough. The long course is another animal entirely and suddenly, I’m feeling that I’m a bit under-prepared.

What do I do when I’m feeling under-prepared? Train! And I’ve been doing plenty of that the last couple weeks as I try to bounce back from my sub-par Oceanside performance and get a little redemption.

A few tweaks that I’ve made are:

• Since April 1, I’ve been attempting to maintain a standard of 80 ft of climbing per mile on my rides and runs. For example, today I did a hilly 5 1/2 mile run with 755 ft of climbing. This is tougher than I thought it would be…sometimes its hard to find routes that meet this requirement without simply doing hill repeats. But I’m close. 188 miles on the bike since April 1 - 14,140 ft of climbing, 75 ft/mile. Running is similar…71 miles, 4926 ft of climbing or 69 ft/mile. 8 of those miles were on the track, obviously no climbing there…so for the 63 miles of road running, I was at an average of 78 ft/mile.
• Running in the heat. Whenever possible, I’m running in the hottest part of the day.
• Eating more solid food on the bike. For Wildflower, I’m going to try to eat some solid food during the first part of the bike, instead of relying on liquids/gels only.

Another week or so of heavy training and than it’s taper time.

I can’t wait for the trip…we have a group of about 10 people going with a big-ass camper. It’s going to be a blast.

Another Tuesday track workout…felt pretty good. I thought I might be fatigued since I did a twenty mile ride in the morning, but I seemed to recover okay.

6 x 800 w/2:30-2:45 rest (avg HR in parentheses)

• 2:53 (157)
• 2:45 (163)
• 2:44 (165)
• 2:44 (167)
• 2:43 (171)
• 2:39 (173)

1/2 mile easy warmup and cooldown

The middle ones felt great, but the last one stung as we ran the first 400 in 1:17. Faded a bit the last 200. I ran in my Newtons. The toebox is too roomy for track workouts, my feet were sliding around a bit….I’ll go back to my DS trainers for these workouts from now on.

Got a pair of these…they are the Newton Motion, which is Newton’s stability training shoe…which simply means they are medially posted. I’ve done a few short runs in them and my first impression is that they are an uptempo shoe, meaning they feel more comfortable when I’m running a bit quicker pace (sub -7/mile). I typically do my quicker paced workouts and races in Asics DS Trainers and my easy-paced long runs in Asics Kayanos. These seem best suited to be a replacement for the DS Trainers. They are certainly light. I weighed them on a digital scale when I bought them…they weighed 11.8 oz in size 13. My Kayanos weigh 15.9 oz. Big difference. The Newtons also feel very ‘bouncy’ and responsive, I really like the feel of them.

Still forming a more concrete opinion about them, but so far so good. I’ll be posting some updates as I get more miles in them.

Happy Tax Day everyone…I hope you all have big refunds coming to you!

It was hot here in San Diego this weekend. Did a hot and hilly 60 mile ride yesterday and a 12 mile run this afternoon. I must have drank 3 gallons of water today.

Managed a pretty solid week of training, just under 12 hrs.

Swim: 3000m, 1 hr, Bike: 112.4 Mi, 6:42, Run: 32.8 Mi, 4:10.

Next week will be a bit bigger in terms of volume.

Started my workday a little late today so I could get some weekday bike miles in. Coach Mike and I hit the Del Dios/Elfin Forest loop…I was struggling to keep up, as Mike was keeping the pace high on the climbs. Ouch.

A bit chilly at the start, but it turned into a beautiful San Diego morning. Sorry no pics, you’ll have to take my word for it.

just over 50 miles, 2:55 with 3600 ft of climbing. Not a bad way to start a Thursday.

Here’s the route: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/5358885