The best goals are ones that you can achieve

After finishing my race on Saturday I was determined to continue my forward progression. I wanted to turn over a new leaf and really put my triathlon training at the top of my priority list. I should have know that it would turn out like it has so many times before.

Sunday was an easy 45 minute recovery ride on the trainer. I put in a movie and enjoyed the nice recovery day. I felt slightly fatigued from my race which actually made me somewhat happy. It reaffirmed that I had pushed myself to my limits on the previous day and made me feel that much better about my results. Not a bad day of training and it was a great way to spend my first day back to training. And then Monday came...

Mondays' workout was a short 1600m swim and since I have classes all day, the plan was to go with the wife to the YMCA after classes/work and get my workout in. We show up to the Y and as we pass the pool on the way to the locker rooms I noticed something different about the pool. It seemed like there was something missing, something that I'm pretty sure should have been there, it seemed somewhat empty. That's right there was no water in the pool. They had decided to clean the pool that week and needless to say thwarted my attempts to get my swim workout in. So I went to my back up plan and did a resistance workout in the gym, which wasn't a swim but at least it was something.

"Don't worry I'll make sure to do my workout tomorrow..."

Tuesday is where it all really started to go downhill. During the week I usually have to do my workouts in the evening since I have classes early in the morning and I really would prefer to not have to wake up at 3am to get a workout in. As always I struggled with getting my workout done after a long day of classes and patients, so unfortunately I ended up convincing myself that I really didn't need to get on the trainer this time. It was late and I had been at school for 12 hours straight so it seemed somewhat justified. Unfortunately this pattern continued for the next three days and the next thing I notice is that it's Friday evening and I haven't done any of my workout's all week. It's not that I wasn't overwhelmed with school and clinic stuff, and even though I had barely any free time on Friday, much less all week I was really starting to feel bad for missing an entire week of workouts. Even though I was going out of town for the weekend I packed up my bike and felt like I could still savage something out of this downward spiral of failed workouts.

Saturday morning came, my alarm went off, I get out of bed, only to find that my watch was dead. A minor thing and it shouldn't have mattered, but for some reason I felt like I would be able to get out the door later that evening. I put my watch on the charger and decided that I can just do my run in the evening right before dinner. As with the rest of my week the time to go out and run came and went and I missed yet another workout. As I laid in bed my determination to ride my bike was greater than ever. Especially since earlier that day my parents showed us the Natchez Trace Parkway in Nashville which is a great area to go ride and I was really excited to go explore.

5am comes and I hear a loud boom outside... really??? Then another boom! Yup it's raining, which means I can't go out and ride. What a horrible way to end a terrible week of training. Not only did I miss almost every single workout, but the one day I really wanted to make up for it mother nature decides that I can't ride. So needless to say this was my least productive week of training. I fell short of my goal to make my training a top priority in my life and I failed miserably at it.

This has made me think of how I make my goals and even though they are made with the truest of intents they tend to be way to lofty. I know when I make goals for patients we always start with short term goals and slowly build towards a larger goal, so why shouldn't I do the same thing in my personal life. Instead of making the bold goal of turning my life around and become a hard core triathlete I'm going to focus more on the little steps. It's an easy concept and I'm sure most people would say it's obvious that you have to set small goals first, but it's easier said than done. Sometimes we get so excited about our final goal that we forget to set those smaller goals to help us reach that final goal. So I've decided that my first short term goal is going to be a pretty straightforward one. I want to complete 3 out of my 6 workouts this week in the morning before I have to go to school or the clinic. I really like this goal since it not only gets me out of the heat but it also will help with preventing me from getting distracted from my training. If I plan on waking up early to do a workout the only thing competing with that workout is sleep. Not to say I don't love sleep but at least it's not school or clinic work. Normally I would set a goal of completing all my workouts in the morning, but the all or nothing method hasn't worked so far so I think it's time to try something a little more forgiving. So there it is. Hopefully I can slowly work at turning my training into a priority and with the right goals I should be able to reach new heights.

Richard B Russel Race Review

I love racing. Racing is why I train. Racing makes me happy. I have always been a racer and most of the time racing is my motivation to get out the door. I love the prep time you put into getting ready for a race. I love the excitement in the air on race days and it's one of the few times that I am happy to wake up early.... well sometimes. This race was 2.5 hours away and since it started at 7:30am I had to get up at 3:30am, which I would have to say is one of those hours in the day that I don't see too often.

The day before my race coach shanks and I went over my race strategy. As always, I set an impressive goal of cutting 17 minutes of my time from last year and shanks being the coach tried to reel me back into reality. I caught a pretty nasty head cold from my brother in-law the weekend before my race and consequently missed all my following workouts that weekend and all but 2 workouts leading up to my race on Saturday. Needless to say I wasn't in my peak performance condition. After talking it out with him he set the goal of cutting between 5 to 8 minutes, but more importantly to maintain a heart rate zone of zone 4. I have always struggled with the idea of subjective goals (goals that are based on what you perceive). These are almost to froo-froo for me. Things like push yourself for the entire race, and race in the red zone. I don't mind subjective goals for my training and I often use them, but to me races should be a measure of what you have accomplished and the only way to really convince me I have accomplished anything is to put an objective (a measurable outcome independent of any influencing perspective) finding in front of me. I like to see numbers and set goals with numbers, so knowing this my coach put forth the somewhat subjective goal of maintaining a zone 4 hear rate. Especially after my post from last week I know I need to work on just enjoying the race more and relishing the fact that I tried my hardest, so I was willing to meet my coach half way with this new goal.

We also talked about nutrition. Since this was an Olympic triathlon ( 1500m swim, 22 mile bike, and 6.25 mile run) we knew nutrition would play a larger role and we decided to try 300 calories on the bike and a bottle with nuun on the run. On the bike I've been using EFS which not only has a lot of calories, but also has a good amount of potassium and sodium. Since it's so hot (and humid) here in Ga and I sweat a lot, so I need all of those electrolytes. I've never used an electrolyte drink on the run so we decided to see how it would go since the half ironman I'm doing in October means those electrolytes will be needed on the run. With all the details hashed out I was feeling great about my race the next day, except the one last instruction he gave me... no beer that night... *sigh* bummer.

3:30am

3:30am

3:30am

Man do I hate mornings. The alarm went off and I would have to say if I hadn't spent $80 to do this race I would have gone back to sleep. The drive wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and I was at the park before I realized it. I find my spot in transition, set up all my gear, got harassed by shanks for not being a morning person, and then head down to the swim start to do a warm up.



The swim was two 750m laps and since I did this race last year I knew to watch out for the start of the second lap. The first lap ends on shore and you have to run about 10-15 yards to the start of the second lap, which wouldn't seem like a big deal but man does it spike your heart rate. As we started the second lap a racer near me sprint the 10-15 yards as fast as possible and then dove in hoping to gain a few seconds on the rest of us. As I took the start of the second lap a little slower I noticed that the boisterous racer had lost his momentum and slowly fell back as he tried to recover from his earlier efforts. As we ended the swim I was feeling pretty well about the race so far and I was excited about my bike leg. I had a great transition and didn't lose either of my shoes while getting on the bike, which recently seems to be a great achievement for me. The bike leg went great! I felt like I was making up time that I lost in the swim and I was following my nutrition plan to the letter. I felt so great that I didn't even pay attention to my heart rate (which was zone 5 the whole time) and I payed for it on the run. I suffered on the run. I felt like I was in purgatory the whole time. There weren't any other racers near me so I started to lose my luster and started to feel less like I was racing and more like I was training. I also had forgotten my socks and despite the excessive amounts of body glide I put in my shoes I was getting some really nasty blisters on my feet. I followed my nutrition plan on the run and while it didn't have a negative effect I didn't feel like it had any benefits. Though I guess the fact that there weren't any negative effects is a benefit.

I crossed the finish line at 2:45:47 and was actually happy with my results. I had cut 3 minutes off my time from last year and even though this wasn't the 17 minutes I wanted or even the more achievable 8 minutes shanks predicted it was still an improvement. After being sick for 5 days, having some pretty nasty blisters, and losing some motivation during the run I had a pretty good race. My average heart rate was zone 4 and if I had done better on the run I would have made huge improvements. I cut 2 minutes off my swim, 3 minutes off my bike, but my run took 2 minutes longer. One of the great things I learned from this race was that I need to work on saving just a little more for the run. I may have put to much into the bike and I paid for it during the run. I also learned that even though I didn't reach my objective goals I was able to have fun and could be proud of what I was able to do.

Oh but wait I did learn one more thing after this race... Coach shanks is a hypocrite!

That's right photographic evidence of Coach Shanks drinking a beer. Oh facebook, why do I love you so? Because you gave me proof that I can have a pre-race beer again!

Lactate testing... Man that burns!

So I get an email from Coach Shanks "What would your thoughts be on doing a Blood Lactate Test?" My thoughts? Why not! It's a great way to really see how the body is reacting to the stresses you are putting it through, plus it just sounds cool. So we hash out the details and decide to meet nice and early at Dynamo Multisports where he teaches some killer athlete specific indoor cycling classes.

I show up at 6am (which is way to early for me) and we get everything all set up. It's a pretty simple test to preform, but that doesn't mean its easy on the athlete. He sets you up on a computrainer which is a really cool indoor trainer that can measure and vary you wattage output. You then do 4 minute stages where he watches your heart rate and cadence, maintains your resistance on the trainer, and takes a blood sample at 3 minutes with a matching RPE value. Each stage consists of an increase in power by 20 watts, and you basically go until you can't go anymore... sounds fun right?



Oh yeah and the room use to be a kitchen. I don't know why but I kind of found that interesting. Anyways the first couple stages are actually pretty easy. It's nothing to intense and Shanks and I actually spent most of the time talked about his music selection, which was pretty sweet. Unfortunately this wasn't the case for the whole test...



Lets put it this way; Shanks caption for this photo when he sent it to me was " your in the pain cave here!" The test became difficult and it only went up from there. The whole time all you are thinking about is that you can't quit, but man do you want to! It's a good kind of pain and you know you're getting great data out of it so you keep pushing hoping that Shanks tells you he's got all the info he needs, instead he keeps encouraging you to keep going. At every 3 minute mark he has to take you blood so that mean you have to get pricked. It's not painful and if he can use the same prick every time he will, just watch out he squeezes your finger like he's trying to pop a pimple. Once you finish he analyzes all the data and is able to come up with new training zones based off of your lactate levels. It was a great experience and was a fairly simple way to get definitive workout zones. Now is the time to put those new zones to use and keep pursuing that never ending goal of inspiration.

Stronger, Faster... retarded dolphin?

Wow does time fly! I've started classes again at school and man am I busy! It has been an interesting few weeks but I have been dedicated to my training. I had a race after my last post that was a great learning experience for me. I was really hoping to do well during this race and I was determined to push my limits.

Only days before this race I met with Coach Shanks and found out how horrible of a swimmer I really was. We worked on my form and after a couple painful hours I walked away with a ton of useful tips to improve my swim. With this new found knowledge I entered the water at my race feeling more like a shark and less like... well less like a retarded dolphin. I ran through all the tips in me head and as the proverbial gun went off I dove in with new hopes of swimming out in front. Well needless to say I was less like a shark than I was hoping. The whole time I was trying to swim correctly but my body wouldn't listen to what my mind was saying... in fact a retarded dolphin probably looked more like a swimmer than I did at this point. Once I finally made it to the shore I knew I had time to make up so I went into the bike with the intentions of making up for my lost time. I flew on that bike, Lance Armstrong himself would have been humbled by the amount of speed I was propelling myself forward with. With only the run left I was feeling great and thought I had a great chance at setting a new PR for myself. The run was brutal but I kept reminding myself of my goals and I never gave up. I have never been so proud of myself crossing that finish line than I did on that day... until my wife told me my time.
I had made no improvements over my time from last year and was still in the exact same ranking in my age group and overall. I was crushed. I had given it my all and made absolutely no time improvements, how could that be? How could I not even improve in my overall placement? I posed this question to my coach and he came back with some very valid points and event sent a very reassuring article to me. Both he and the article were right. Sometimes it's not about your time or your place overall, but simple that you were happy with how hard you pushed yourself. I feel like this is something I have always felt, but sometimes we get caught up in setting objective (measurable) goals instead of subjective (how you felt) goals. Those subjective goals can be even more satisfying than the objective ones and in the end that's really what matters. I have another race this weekend and even though we have set some objective goals ( cut 8 minutes off my time from last year) I also plan on racing my hardest and being happy with the fact that I got to race, because in the end that's what really matters.