Distance gives Perspective

So now that my bike commute to work is only 1/3rd the distance of my long weekend run, it doesn't seem like much at all anymore. I bike 7 miles on pavement each way and My long run is 21 miles on trails.

As an example of how not to train, I fell a little sick after pushing it too hard over the past few weeks. There's a great thread on Triscoop right now about how some of that works, so go ahead and put in your two cents. Essentially, you can overdo it in two ways: One is pushing too hard and injuring yourself, the other is increasing your volume too quickly. I pushed my volume of running too much, driving myself into the ground.

The rule of thumb is to not increase your volume of running by more than 10 percent in one week. A quick check of my Google calender to your right will show that I ran 5.92 hours for 30.96 miles one week and then jumped up to 8.23 hours for 42.23 miles the very next week. That's an increase of volume or distance just shy of 40%. No wonder I cratered.

Back to the bamboo front, I've got some pictures of what my bamboo work is looking like. Check these pix out. It is taking a long time, but I am having fun. I am VERY interested in building a bike after I learn more while building a bike rack.

Redesigned Suunto Foot Pod Review

I just took the newly redesigned Suunto Foot Pod for a spin. I'm digging it!

We all go crazy over GPS, but GPS has some issues.

• It doesn't work indoors and can be extremely inaccurate under dense tree cover.


• GPS isn't very accurate at the consumer grade and small size athletes like to use.


• Battery life is short.


• Sometimes signal can take a long time to aquire, or there is no signal at all. What then?

Suunto has done a great job of developing their products around a system of "pods" that allows the athlete to easily pick and choose how he/she wants to measure distance. I was let in on a little secret about GPS vs. Foot Pod by a Suunto rep. "Use the Foot Pod. It's more accurate and the battery lasts much, much longer." Now don't get me wrong. I love GPS, and there's definitely times for it, (sailing, anyone?) but a foot sensor works for 99.9% of running situations.

I have only owned one tiny Apple product in my life, the Shuffle, but I constantly rave about how Apple designed the user interface. Tiny LEDs only activate right when you turn it on, saving battery life. The thing is slim and functions as a clip, making you search for it before you realize you are even wearing it. iTunes talks with it easily, allowing you to manage it from your PC.

The new Foot Pod reminds me of the Shuffle. Being a guy, I went right past the instructions and tried to turn it on. No on switch? What gives? I started reading through the documentation and realized what was going on. Suunto had done some smart designing not only to reduce weight, but also improve battery life and make it more usable across shoe platforms. Here's the list of what I found:

• It now uses a clip instead of a rubber shoe-lace-threaded holder. You used to have to unlace your shoes to mount the holder, not anymore. Just unclip and place it on another shoe. I like that A LOT.


• You pair it with your watch for its first ever use by turning it upside down. What? I quickly realized that the engineers were using the internal sensors instead of a switch. Another weight saving idea.  From then on out, just move the sensor and it turns on so your watch can sense it.


• It turns on after sensing movement. The light either blinks 3 times or 6. 3 = good to go, 6 = 5 hours or less of battery life. That's it, no more lights. Just like the Shuffle, no blinking lights during use saves battery.


• Speaking of battery, they switched out the AAA for a watch battery. The reduction in LED use and probably some other onboard stuff gets you 3 times the hours of use as well. 200 hours on one battery is great. Make sure you dispose of that old battery correctly!


• Then there is the reduction in size. I never thought the old model was huge, but hey, I'll take a smaller size. Less weight = more efficiency!

So there you have it. Suunto pulled an Apple and came out with an innovative reinvention of their old product. I love seeing this trend in the industry. Keep finding ways to make the technology disappear so we can focus on running instead of fiddling with hardware.

Crash and Burn like Bamboo

I wondered if something was going to go wrong when I started running Friday afternoon and I felt sore and just a tad bit tired. Nothing big in itself, but I had my third epic run in just as many Saturdays the very next day. It crossed my mind that I should take the day off before I try to run 28 miles, but I ran anyway.

I got up at 5 am on Saturday, got my crap together, and drove to Lake Bryan to run on the trails. It had rained all day Friday. I got there about 15 minutes before dawn and had an overwhelming feeling to sleep. Yet another bad sign.

I was too tired to run.

But I'm no sissy, so I did it anyway. I had full intention of completing 4 of the 7 mile loops for a total of 28 miles. I also had show notes and a mic to record a podcast on the last loop.

The first loop hurt. That was another bad sign. The second loop, well, that's when I started thinking about possibly not doing a fourth. The course was very runnable, but 2 sections had that sticky mud that made your feet resemble 20 lb. snowshoes.

The third loop made me realize that doing a fourth would cause me more harm than good. My upward curve of improvement had hit a brick wall. There was no more improvement to make with running, only rest.

It was still a great time. 21 miles in the butt-ass cold and mud was very primal and fun. I went home, then went to a birthday party of Kai's friend. Then the crash and burn occured.

I couldn't warm up. Hell, I'm still cold two days later. We were supposed to go to a punk rock concert and I felt too chilled and sick and tired to go. I was supposed to go on a recovery ride today, but pushed it back until Monday.

Never one to have a shortage of crazy projects to work on, I started collecting bamboo to make a bike rack. Why bamboo? It's a grass and grows like crazy, so it is considered a much more renewable resource than trees. It also has incredible strength, commonly called nature's carbon fiber. The trick is curing it so it doesn't get brittle and crack with time. Here is a cool link to Calfee building bikes out of bamboo.

I stumbled across a website that showed a great way to cure bamboo quickly. The magic occurs with the use of a torch, which freaks me out and excites me at the same time. Armed with information that only the Internet could provide (that ain't saying much), I chopped down some THICK sections of bamboo that was growing near my house. I then bought a torch and went to work. I had a ton of fun, but this is going to take some time. I'll post some pix soon. After working on computers 5 days a week, I love working on a project with my bare hands.

I gotta say, I was surprised at how impressive a 2 inch thick piece of bamboo can be. If the curing method works, I've got a little side business making some cool stuff going on.

Why HR is Good, but not Great

One important thing I learned last year is that HR is not an ideal method for measuring performance. Many things can mess up your HR. Here's a short list of the usual suspects:

• Dehydration - usually lowers it


• Caffeine - raises it


• Lack of sleep


• Food


• Anxiety


• Time of day


• Weather


• Unexplained

I decided to write this post specifically because of today's run. Instead of starting at 5:30 AM, I started at 3:45 PM in the freezing rain and after drinking a 16 oz diet Coke. Check this craziness out. (You can click on it to get the full size image)

After running for 15 minutes with my HR more than 30 BPM higher than it should be, I said "F-this!" and walked for about 30 seconds and adjusted my shoes. Look what happened afterwards. The short break dropped my HR by a massive amount and let me settle into my run.

I've got an email into Suunto to try to figure out how view just the data after I took a split at 30 minutes. It was in the low 120s again, but I can't figure out how to calculate exactly how much. My watch seems to be taking splits at random intervals along with the one I did by hand. Weird.

Just for kicks, I thought I'd include a picture I found of my bike at mile 56 when I did my second self-supported Ironman in 2005. Look for the MP3 player stuck to the Bento box along with heavy gloves resting on the handlebars. I recall that the temperature was between 33 and 42 degrees that whole day. That was living life on the edge!

For an extra special treat, BIKE PORN! Check out this photo stream in flickr of a guy that takes pix of women riding around in everyday clothes in Amsterdam.  I suggest checking it out in Slideshow Mode.

Phone Interview with Trails and Tribulations and Proof of the Running Gods

Kim and Andrew of the Trails and Tribulations Podcast called me for a phone interview last night. That was fun.

I got at least one doubter about the time vs. distance method of training I talked about on my last post. I searched the blogs of two of the best Ultra runners for examples of running by time, not distance and listed them below. Open up the links and us ctrl+f to search for the word "hour". You'll find 3 hour runs, 7 hour runs, 2 hour runs, listed over and over again. I'm sure it will help us all get a better grasp of the concept.

Elite runner and Bandera 100k winner Josue Corre's posts about doing runs by time -

Here's the same thing for Anton Krupicka, last year's winner of the Rocky Raccoon 100.

These are also great blogs to follow anyway because these guys are amazing runners and do a lot of barefooting.

Ok, I've also got some numbers for you from my own experience this week. I've been running roughly an hour every morning. I go by time and effort level, not distance. The methodology is to run slowly and over time bring your HR down and speed up. Here we go -

Tues: 1:03 hrs run, 127 BPM, 5.39 mi, 11.30 pace

Wed: 56 min run, 122 BPM, 5.13 miles, 10.49 pace

Thurs: 60 min run, 120 bpm, 5.51 miles 10.55 pace

What you see here is a very slight trend towards lower HR and a faster pace. Time comes first, then effort level, then come distance and speed. It should also be noted that I walked a couple minutes of the first one, about 30 seconds of the second, and none of the last one. (I actually ran the last one in aqua-socks). The speed of the last two are essentially identical, but the effort level was lower.

As time goes on, I will be able to run faster and faster during my morning hour run until I'm doing it at a 10 min/mile pace in the 120 BPM range.

How do you apply this in real life? When racing anything like a Half Ironman or greater, you have to moderate yourself so that you can endure the event. Go too hard too early, and you've ruined your race. When on the bike or run, wear your HR monitor and stay in your lower zones and you'll be able to go much faster on average by the time you finish.

When racing true long distance events, you really have no control of your top speed over the length of the race. Your body is trained as your body is trained, no matter how you trained. But a scientific fact is that if you veer into zone 4 and 5 of your HR, you are damaging your results. So, if the high end of your zone 3 is 145 BPM, then whatever that speed is for you is your top speed. Don't like it? Tough luck. You should have trained more.

At that point, if you want to beat somebody who is faster than you, your only hope is that they have a flat or don't do their nutrition right. Nutrition is a huge factor in distance training and racing, so there's lots you can do with that.