I Have Witnessed the Future

I'm reading a book by Marcus Buckingham titled "Go. Put Your Strengths to Work." Unlike triathlon, you should be using your strengths to get things done at work and not worry about improving your weaknesses. Improving what you're bad at is a waste of time, the reasoning goes, because you will only be slightly less bad, but still bad at what you just spent a lot of time trying to improve.

Marcus encourages us to find out what we are good at and use it to our benefit. This made me ponder what I'm actually good at (not the run portion of a triathlon) and I finally came up with one certainty: One of my strengths is using technology to do things in a new way. We can go on and on with listing things like podcasting, using wattage for training, and geocaching, but my new favorite is collaborating with coworkers to get things done using Google Documents.

While my coworker, Kevin, and I attended a software conference in San Diego, we had a intuitive flash of brilliance. The whole building is stocked with WiFi and we are taking notes on the lectures to bring back to fellow employees in Texas, so why don't we write all of our notes in Google Documents and share them with each other?

For the rest of the week, Kevin and I had a blast writing our notes into documents on Google's servers. Everything was saved as we typed it, we could see each others' edits, and I would occasionally get a message from him that I was writing stuff that he had already written and to not bother. I even dropped my computer on it's power plug port at the end of the week, effectively taking the whole machine out of service. No worries - everything was saved online. I also can fine tune my notes at home and then publish them at work, without ever having to move them around via email or thumb drive.

This workflow performed so well, it was like something out of the future. Ubiquitous WiFi and server-based apps made my job much easier than ever before. Just this morning my wife was asking questions about what we will do without a computer while I get it fixed. I told her "This isn't like last time the laptop died (a few years ago). Our email, bill payment, all my work stuff, even the software I'm using to post to this blog, it's all online." Sure, there's a bunch of things loaded on that laptop, like my music, podcast production, and workout software that I can't use, but we will survive for a few days or weeks.

Back to the book I'm reading - Marcus says one of the identifiers of your strengths is that you enjoy doing it. You are so adept at it, it seems effortless. Remember when I said Kevin and I "had a blast" writing notes in Google Documents? That's how I know one of my strengths is adopting new technology to get work done.

What are some of your strengths?

Bouldering is Good for the Soul

I'm in San Diego this week for work, which is always a sweet deal. I used to live here, so I know the town really well and there is always great stuff to do.

When my coworker and I landed, we found out that the airlines lost my luggage. I've been through this before and there's not much you can do except wait it out. We were going to go surfing, but my swimsuit and contacts (I'm blind without them) were probably flying around above Oklahoma somewhere.

The best thing to do when you're frustrated and can't do anything about it is to find a way to take your mind off things. Kevin and I hit Solid Rock Gym, the local rock climbing gym, where all you need is your hands and 20 bucks to have a really good time. We were there for several hours doing what is called "bouldering", where you only climb up a few feet and then traverse sideways.

Bouldering is an amazing thing. It's like a strength and agility puzzle, where you have to figure out how to get your body from point A to point B without touching the ground. It has all the Zen qualities of rock climbing, but without the need for a second person or ropes.

I popped in my headphones and bouldered away to my heart's content. Met lots of cool, friendly people, and then got a phone call that my bag was dropped off at the hotel. It was a much better way to spend the afternoon instead of hasseling with the luggage folks at the airport.

Great Swim Coaches aren’t Lean, Just Sunburned

By the time a great swimmer has enough time to actually coach, he/she is probably not working out like crazy anymore. Looking for a good instructor? Just find the plump dude wandering around the pool deck in board shorts at 7 AM with an exceptional sunburn. The roasted epidermis is a sign he's spent all last month coaching kids from 3 to 5 PM.

An Underwater Interview

Our good buddy Drew from Bend, OR drops in on this podcast and gives us another great interview. Of course, the show starts off with Emily and I having a pleasant conversation about my training schedule and how I think she's plotting to kill me. Join in on the conversation, voicemails, and much more by listening in!

Below are the pictures Drew sent me to go along with the podcast. Vanessa is his coach and you can contact her at
541.760.9943 or email vanessa.polvi at dartfish.com.

Shownotes!

• Shout outs to all our homies.


• We got the PVGlider.


• Emily is trying to kill me!


• Emily is addicted to Bodyflow


• Two voicemails from Deej


• Emily talks about how we dress for podcasting.


• Prof. Erich and my dad are geniuses.


• Jetsack training with Coach Adam in Sleepy Hollow voicemail.


• Agent Posie voicemail?


• Jetpack is a Terrorist.


• Keith from Boston voicemail.


• Moonpie + Texafornia = fired.


• This training is killing me!


• Pink is HOT voicemail from Bi-Guy.


• We are a gay friendly podcast.


• Emily has a sewer mouth.


• Excuse us, but this is a SUUNTO podcast.


• Emily gives a shout out to all her peeps.


• I get all dirty hippy environmentalist.


• Emily makes me tell her something nice.


• Emily takes my something nice and throws back attitude.


• I’m going to San Deigo next week! Shoot me an email at texafornia at gmail.com if you want to meet up!


• Drew records himself while running.


• Drew interviews coach and former NCAA swimmer Vanessa Polvi.

I am Exhausted

I'm not sure what it is. Well, I know exactly what it is: The heat and the volume of training is tweaking me to my limits. I'm spending all day trying to sleep and catch my breath from doing nothing at all today.

But it's not like I've been doing nothing at all. Swimming 3500 yards, running 5.6 miles, biking for 70 at 17.5 mph, then running another 5.6 miles yesterday would be considered a lot by anybody's standards. Doing it between the hours of Noon and 8 PM in Central Texas in June takes it to a whole other level. No, this wasn't a race. This was just another typical day of weekend training for Ironman Wisconsin.

I argued with my wife about getting started on the training so late in the day. She had some hair thing in the morning and I had to watch our son, so I bowed out and said I'd do my training in the afternoon. I do recall saying something about training in 96 degrees and 50% humidity being "self-induced thermo-suicide."

It was a big mistake. I drank six tall water bottles, two aero bottles, and two 70 oz. Camelbaks during yesterday's workouts and didn't even come close to staying hydrated. That's 2.56 gallons of gatorade, and I still only peed once the entire time and then not again until about 3 in the morning.

I faintly remember coming in from my first run, nearly spraying sweat from every pore, cursing an endless tirade at my wife under my breath about what I'll nicely refer to as a "scheduling conflict" and walking straight into the shower. I put it as cold as possible in an effort to try to cool myself down. I chilled out enough to gain coordination to throw my leg over the bike and then headed out for 4 hours of punishment. At least this would have some airflow to it.

An hour into the ride, I realized I couldn't put forth the effort needed. Any real speed resulted in invisible arms crushing my chest and neck, my eyes bulging like those poor bastards stuck out on the Mars landscape in Total Recall. I found myself sitting on a bridge railing in the shade, trying to stop the dizziness and impending collapse.

After a few minutes, I recalculated my day's strategy and went at it again. This isn't bad. This is perfect IM training. It's not all about endurance; some of it is about smarts. "I'm going to get this all done," I told myself. "You can do this, just be smart and scale it back some."

So, I had change the bike part of my workout from one of exacting wattage numbers to one of hydration practice. It's a good skill to know. I've learned quite a bit about it while trying to do this volume in this heat. I thought I knew all about it after 5 years of tri-training in Texas. I know lots more after half a month training like this than I ever did before. I got the workout done and was actually biking and running pretty strong at the end. I was still peeing dust, though.

In a tri-world where we only want to talk about our successes and feel bad about talking about our failures, it is important to remember that proper recovery is a skill. It helps us in the long term to avoid injury and eventually burnout. You are not a pussy because you backed out of a workout. You just might be really smart. That missed workout might have gained you a second in speed in the short term, but destroyed you in the long term.

My coach just sent out a link to "mandatory reading" about proper recovery and symptoms of overtraining from a website called The Podium. I read through it and found that I've got about 99 out of the 100 symptoms, so I'm enjoying a nice Nuun cocktail and writing this post instead of doing today's 1:40:00 run. Oh, I'll probably do it, but I'm counting walking around the block with my wife and son as part of it.

As I'm writing this, my wife just came in from the front yard and said my cycling buddy is out in the street. He's saying that he's getting faster while I'm inside resting. This stuff runs deep, huh?