Time to Taper

We're a little less than two weeks out from the Eagleman 70.3 race in Cambridge, MD. Originally scheduled as my 'A' race, it's now serving as a stepping stone to Ironman Louisville on August 29th. The allure of Ironman sucked me back in! I'll be training with my friend Ryan, who will be competing at the full distance for his first time. Ryan's a good bit stronger than me, so repeatedly trying to hold his tire on long rides will surely have me ready to go on race day.

On Sunday I completed a race rehearsal for Eagleman. The goal of the rehearsal was to ride at target wattages for the full distance of the bike leg, then hop off and practice the discipline of running slowly for the first three miles before ramping up to target pace for another three. While not an easy workout by any stretch, it is more of an exercise in holding back than a suffer fest. The rehearsals also provide an ideal opportunity to practice the race day nutrition plan.



I did well on this rehearsal and feel pretty confident heading into race day. The attached graph of wattage over time indicates a fairly steady output of power, with the strongest hour being in the back half of the ride (black shaded section). That's good and, admittedly, a little more disciplined than usual for me.

I have a good bit of accumulated fatigue and am looking forward to regaining the skip in my step as I taper over the next two weeks. My goal is to break the five hour mark. My training metrics indicate the goal is within my abilities, but I'll need good weather and nearly perfect execution to pull it off. My previous best at this distance is a little over 5:05.

Training in Blackwater

During our recent heat wave I snuck away from work for two days to do Eagleman 70.3 on course training. I enjoy riding on Maryland's eastern shore. The roads have huge shoulders and the natives are generally bike friendly. I get a sense of escape while riding through the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. The flat, windy marsh land, with its unique and plentiful wildlife, feels like another world.

Day 1 featured a 91 miler, during which I snapped some photos. Day 2 was a race rehearsal consisting of a 56 mile course ride followed by a one hour run. It was good to get on course training in that heat. I was pretty wilted after day 2.

Race day is Sunday, June 13. I'm planning on setting a new PR for the 70.3 distance. My training metrics are on target. To hit my goal I'll have to stay consistent & healthy over these final four weeks, and then execute like a champ on race day.

Return on Investment

So now that I dropped a fair amount of change on a geeked out bike, I'm afraid of being no faster than before. Building my fitness engine is only one of the necessary ingredients to gaining desired speed. How I fit onto the bike is just as important. A great fit will have me producing high power output while cutting through air with minimal aerodynamic drag, in a position that I can hold for several hours at a time.

Pros like Lance have access to high end wind tunnels where they can tweak positioning with realtime data. The rest of us have to learn through a longer process of trial and error.

It looks to me that we have my positioning pretty well dialed in. Thanks to Todd Kenyon at ttbikefit.com for the help. Check his site out if you're questioning your own positioning.

So what do you think... Should I make any other adjustments?

Defying Convention, and Loving It

I like no nonsense high ROI stuff. Work, play, personal – doesn’t matter. I like performance benchmarks.

My career depends upon it. In an industry that too often hides behind legal documents and errors & omissions insurance, my group delivers performance guarantees. We can’t fall prey to doing things just because popular trends or conventional wisdom say so. Our decisions are made on case-by-case analyses: On data that we’ve measured or our vendors have measured and, then, specifically applied to our clients’ particular situations. By doing things that way we uncover a lot of myths. We prove a lot of industry-wide sacred cows wrong (not our goal, it just works out that way). Many within the green building industry aren’t ready to accept our assertions because they sometimes defy convention, so we’re left serving a minority of intensely loyal clients; a loyalty developed out of proven performance.

So it is with my multisport training.

Conventional triathlon training wisdom would have me coming out of the winter with a huge “base” comprised of long hours of easy swimming, cycling, and running. Most training guides and >$500 per month coaches preach this old school philosophy, saying the method provides metabolic benefits like increased capillary density and fat burning capacity. I’m sure that’s great for folks who choose to burn 15 to 20 hours (or more) per week in pursuit of athletic domination. I don’t want to do that. I have a career, a family, and like to stay connected to my community. This triathlon thing keeps me sane and provides an appropriate competitive outlet, but it’s ultimately just for fun.

Enter the coaches and athletes at Endurance Nation. I just completed a 20 week “out season” plan that had me cycling and running very hard for six to seven hours a week - Pretty countercultural in endurance sport circles. At the conclusion of that 20 week period, my cycling threshold power is:

• 20% higher than it was at the beginning of the program.
• Just 5 watts shy of my all time high.
• Just 12 watts short of my lifetime peak goal.

Additionally, today I ran the hilly Caesar Rodney half marathon in Wilmington, DE. I broke my previous personal record for that distance by more than 2-1/2 minutes. I didn’t taper for the race and I did my final painful bike test less than 24 hours earlier.

Not bad for a 42 year old fella on the first full day of spring, eh? I’d say the guys at EN are on to something. Wonder how strong I’ll be this summer?

5K Madness

When my Afib issue surfaced in the fall of 2007 I thought my days of hard racing might be over forever. Last season taught me that clearly wasn’t the case.

The Endurance Nation training strategy includes relatively short but highly intense workouts throughout the winter months. We use 5K races for running fitness benchmarking. The last two seasons had me sitting on the race sidelines, “guesstimating” my running fitness, while I learned to manage my heart electrical problems. So this season I was really itching to train and benchmark the EN way. I signed up for five 5K road races. Today was the final of those, the third of three Frozen Foot series races in Elizabethtown. I was happy to walk away with the third place age group medal for the race series. In all I placed three times over the course of the five races. My first road running medals since I was a teenager. Pretty cool.

My times progressively improved throughout the winter. I started at 21:14 in early November and finished today with a 20:20. My pre-season goal was to break the 20-minute mark by the first day of spring. I didn’t quite make it, but the aggressive goal kept me focused. I still hope to break that mark at Lancaster’s Race Against Racism in late April. Performance goals keep me focused and I have more fun when I set them.

My mom passed away the day before my fourth race – just three weeks ago. I woke up Sunday morning and felt like I’d been whacked over the head. As you might imagine the prior day was quite an endurance event in its own right, but on an entirely different plane. I was at her side when she died just 12 hours earlier. After a brief appearance at church I decided to run that day. I wanted a sense of normalcy. It wasn’t easy and I almost quit about 10 minutes in out of apathy, but somehow I summoned the energy to keep moving forward. My mom certainly did not teach me to quit. She was a fighter.

All that pain for a stupid 20-minute 5K? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m no Ryan Hall. When it comes to endurance sports I’m the guy who metaphorically busts his ass just to make the team. And that’s what I love about it. The beauty is in the pursuit of excellence, in being “the man who is actually in the arena,” as Teddy Roosevelt said. The lessons of mental tenacity taught through endurance sports translate to all facets of life.

A New Adventure

I managed a decent race at the Brierman 50-miler on Sunday, October 4. This despite missing the start of the race. I sorta ran a little behind schedule when I took care of some "urgent business" that required my wetsuit to be removed. I've never squeezed into that neoprene body suit on so fast... The entire field was already out to sea before I had a chance to put it on! Somehow I still managed the 7th fastest swim out of 85 starters. Still trying to figure that one out. I basically held my position on the bike and run and managed to finish 8th overall. My season's now over... One month of unstructured exercise before launching an out-of-season plan on November 1. It was a good year: 3 podium finishes (bronze, silver, & a gold), a half marathon PR, and a respectable Ironman 70.3 that included a lousy 3-week lead-up.

And now for my announcement....... With the help of Deeter Gallaher Group (http://www.deetergallahergroup.com/) I've launched a professional blog. Check it out for yourself! http://blog.mcclureco.com/. They used the word "pithy" in our press release. Anyone know what that means? Please follow me if you're so inclined. Should be fun!

Deferred Projects

I've been thinking a lot about my endurance sports time commitment. What would I do with the 500 hours each year dedicated to exercise if I hated exercise or, worse, found myself unable to exercise? Sleep would occupy a significant amount of that time for sure. But there are a number of things on my bucket list that aren't likely to become reality while I remain addicted to the multi-sport lifestyle. Here's what I've come up with:

1. Take a car apart and put it back together. I'm an engineer that doesn't know nearly enough about cars short of theoretical internal combustion engine problems. I love cars and would surely spend way too much money on them if I didn't already do that with bicycles. My bikes are actually worth more than my cars.

2. Learn Spanish. I find it a little embarrassing to be mono-linguistic (I think that's a word. If not, forgive me. I have an engineer's education. See #1 above). I had 3 years of French in high school. When touring France in 1989 I realized how little those 3 years prepared me for actually interacting with the French. Too much time spent on proper sentence structure and ordering from menus, not enough time spent actually learning how to converse in real time. Anyway, there are obvious reasons to learn Spanish while living in America. I think I'd try Rosetta this time.

3. Get life guard certified. I spend a fair amount of time around the water. Some day something bad's gonna happen and I want to be fully prepared. The number of teenie boppers and old men on the life guard chairs scares me. Despite the cost of entry, I might still make this happen some off season.

4. Become a jazz musician, not just a note player. I'm blessed with some genetic gifts for playing the trumpet. It sounds good, but the reality is I just know how to read notes and make a good sound (I'm just an engineer. See #1 above). Learning to play for real takes serious study and commitment. I would love to become a middle aged understudy of a great jazz musician, but am too addicted to endorphins to ever make it happen.

A couple of my college buddies are full professors at Penn State. One of them's on sabbatical. Geez... I can't even imagine. Think I could negotiate a paid sabbatical in my private industry job? :-)