Music Appreciation at Zones 4-5

Geek confession #5: I really enjoy choral music and opera.

I sang in a choir from 4th grade through the end of residency. I could revel in performing to a crowd without having them look at me because I was either in a choir loft and/or one of many singers. Also, I didn't have to dress up for Mass (those robes cover up everything). And I could hide from the nuns who would tell that I was going to hell if I received communion because I wasn't baptized.

In 17 years of being part of an organized group of singers, I became proficient at reading music and sang alot of beautiful pieces including Handel's Messiah x 3, Vivaldi's Gloria (just as classic to Van Morrison's song and far superior to Laura Branigan's version), Mozart's Vespers of the Solemn Confessor and Coronation Mass, and Brahm's How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place. I know all the words (even the Latin ones) and can't help but sing along. So when it came time to create my iPod playlist for trainer rides, I naturally included all my classical and choral favorites. I could accurately gauge my perceived exertion with my singing efforts (see: http://train-thisironman.blogspot.com/2008/12/rke.html).

During the intervals at 95-100% FTP, I couldn't sing my soprano parts of the chorus and generate those watts. So I finally stopped and listened. What I heard was magnificent! For once I wasn't just singing my part or listening for cues to when I could sing my part. I actually heard the music wholly and not as a background to my singing. The songs bathed me in their loveliness, impressed me with their balance, and left me awestruck with their symphony. These pieces that I have sung over and over in choir practice, the car, the shower were now like intriguing and beautiful people that I had overlooked because they were familiar.

For my 120%FTP intervals, I chose opera for my playlist as I knew I wouldn't have the breath or the nerve to sing along with the likes of Pavarotti, Kiri Te Kanawa, or Kathleen Battle. The intervals are 2.5 minutes---just about the length of an aria! During my labored moments of the interval, Luciano belting, Vincero...vincero...VIN-CER-O!! (translate: I will win!) in Nessum Dorma lofts me above my pain. When Kiri hits those meteorically high notes in Chi il bel sogno di Doretta so effortlessly, when she sings O mio babbino caro so fervently, how can I pant and gasp? I can only smooth out my pedalling in a small attempt to match her mellifluousness. Both songs are about love and yearning barely containable in the human heart. I am overcome by their emotion and beauty that the interval is hardly a chore.

I have heard that listening to music while exercising can decrease perceived exertion by 25%. I supposed anything distracting enough can decrease how much we perceived our present suffering. I'd like to think that I've found another awareness during my intense physical efforts and not so much that I'm being distacted from those efforts. I know exactly how hard I'm working--I can see it on my powermeter. However, the music that fills my head is something completely different, but fits right into my present activity and state. I used to run/ride to loud, heavy metal music (AC/DC Back in Black, Quiet Riot Cum on Feel the Noize). I haven't traded those classics in for riding in a powdered wig and a string quartet. Whether I'm working hard or noodling along, Brian Johnson and Keith DuBrow sound the same to me: forceful and hoarse. I guess I just needed some new tunes to jam to...

The Disconnection

It's no secret I have test anxiety. While the great results of last week's bike test did allay my nerves for this week's run test, I reminded myself that my cycling abilities differ greatly from my running ones. Call me Dr. Buzzkill.

So back to my anxiety coping strategy of overplanning: I'd do my test on the flatest part of my neighborhood route as I wanted to run on pavement and not the squishy, slow cinder of the Leigh High Valley Trail. I do this test on Sunday after rearranging my workout week to have Saturday as a day off. Kevin would pace me with specific paces: running in front of me for the first mile at my old Vdot pace so I would have to chase him down, but not too hard. Then run right next to me or behind me at a pace 12 seconds per mile faster than my old Vdot pace for th rest of the run. He would rehearse his best impression of CK, my race nemesis, and taunt me relentlessly as her stand-in during my test.

Planning done, I have a run test nightmare on Monday night. The dream: I'm exiting an ocean swim at Ironman Galapagos. Sea lions and fur seals playfully swim around me, curious about a rubber clad, flailing denizen of their waters. I run up a shore with sharp, black lava rocks, dodging dozens of marine iguanas. In the transition tent, I take off my wetsuit. Inexplicably, I start putting it back on.

"Hey! Stop doing that! It's time to get on your bike and ride." I tell myself.

Completely disconnected from my mind, my body continues to put on the wetsuit. I am bursting with frustration. Later in the dream giant tortoises pass me on the run.

On Tuesday, I take my new power zones for a spin and ride 2 X 20 at FTP. I'm always thinking that I could have gone harder on my tests despite finishing most of them too hypoxic to see straight and drooling. Tueday's ride left my legs and lungs quite fatigued and proved that I most certainly went hard enough on my last test. A bike workout well done.

A warm front rolls into on Wednesday and appears only to linger until Friday before more cold, wind, and snow pummels Upstate NY.

"You should just do the run test today while the weather is good." Kevin suggests.

He's right. Besides, I don't think I can sleep through any more nightmares about Ironman and marine iguanas.

"Do you want supportive or stern encouragement?" Kevin asks as we gear up for the test.

I'm too nervous to think about it. "Whatever you can come up with, honey."

The first 0.5 mile starts on a slight uphill. Kevin about 5 feet in front of me calls out pace and the first split. He turns around frequently to check my form.

"You look great, baby. Way to keep up the cadence"

At the first mile, I'm 12 seconds ahead of schedule and running downhill.

"Here's where we can put some time in the bank for the last mile uphill."

I'm not responding at all to any of his words because I cannot spare one oxygen molecule toward speech. All of my hemoglobin is being utitilized for running only. My leaden legs will not turn over. With every ounce of concentration, I will myself to keep my cadence at 90 rpm. My footfalls thud loudly on the pavement.

"Keep your feet light! Like running on hot coals!" Kevin says.

1.3 miles into the test I want to stop, but can't muster the energy to say it. My pace starts to slow despite running downhill.

"This isn't time to take a break! You can lie on the couch all night, but you're running right NOW!"

"No one ever died from quad pain."

My quads don't exactly hurt. They just won't move.

"I just saw CK running 7:30's in army boots..." That bitch couldn't run 7:30's if I paid her. Again, words in my head as I'm too taxed to speak.

"This is the hardest part of the run, baby. Anyone can run fast for the last half mile." Kevin speaks effortlessly; his enthusiasm ebullient.

I think Damn you for speaking so easily at this pace. My legs have disconnected from my brain. I concentrate on driving my legs down and back, keeping my feet light, cadence high. I manage for a few strides and succumb to the heaviness again.

With 0.5 miles to go, Kevin asks,"Do you want me to run ahead of you so you can see what 8 min/miles looks like or stay and berate you?"

I gasp, "Please stay and berate me."

He brings me home with the continued combination of "You can do it, baby!" and "CK's gonna kick your ass!"

A 6 second PR over last the test. I'll take it. I'm just so happy to be done running, finished with the test.

Kevin know me better than I think he does. His words, pacing, and company was the perfect combination to get me through that test. I hope to someday have a high enough Vdot to speak without difficulty at those paces. Until then, I shall keep plugging away with the training and recall some Kevin sound bites when I'm suffering. My favorite is No one ever died from quad pain.

I Cannot Lie...I Did Not Pen That Last Lovely Post!

Make no mistake: I do hold The Air King with high regard and can attribute at least half of my watts increase in my last bike test to its air circulating power. However, the last witty post complete with an ODE (in correct meter no less!) is the product of my DH: Kevin, the Wev...The Poetry Slinging Blog King!

Ode to the Air King

Kitima and I have been hitting the trainer hard (her more so than I) in an effort to improve our bike fitness for the coming season but the prime problem is heat dissipation. At higher wattage outputs we were sweating like pregnant nuns. So I opted for the nuclear solution and purchased the Air King (seen below in all its glory). A fan so powerful that even on the lowest setting it will blow freckles from your face.

Scooby looks up in awe at the mighty fan in the lower left of the photograph. Before this photograph was taken he was a chocolate lab but the Air King blew the color off of him. Kitima is just happy to be done with her workout so we could go out for sushi. Her top was previously a long-sleeve but the sleeves were blown into oblivion.

I had some trepidation in ordering the Air King. Many things proclaim themselves to be the King of this or the King of that and fall fantastically flat on their faces after tremendous marketing bombast and braggadocio: The Plow King; Martin Luther; The Fisher King; The Food King; quotes like "I'm king of the world"; don't even get me going on the Mattress King...the band Kings of Leon are pretty rockin' though.

After many a breezy ride I concluded that the only way to properly praise the regal blower was via an ode. You remember those right? Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats and Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots by Mark Twain surely and swiftly pop into your skull. Below you will find one stanza of ten lines. All lines are in iambic pentameter except the eighth which is iambic trimeter. I won't bore you with the rhyming scheme as it is self-evident to a bright crew of readers like yourself...and before criticizing the fact that I only have one stanza and that a proper ode has more than one stanza I would politely suggest any of my gentle readers to write more than one stanza on a fan. I also contemplated a limerick but the rhyming options for "truck" would have made this blog's rating restricted.

Without fanfare you came brought by brown truck.

You were easy to build complete with wrench.

Air King spin long, rotate and blow with luck.

Mighty tri-blade whir fast; remove sweat stench.

Turbo-prop sound makes all leer up to sky.

Zephyr towards two bikes spinning in place.

Beyond zone six the King will not cower.

Pedal faster or die!

Wind speed never seen; freckles blown off thy face.

Secret weapon raises threshold power.

TSS

In the general surgery world, TSS = Trauma Severity Scoring. It is a method for quantitatively summarizing injury severity and helps predict outcome of trauma. Several scoring systems exists depending on the type of trauma: the Glascow Coma Scale, the Penetrating Abdominal Trauma Index, Sequential Organ Failure Score (the acronym is SOFA--I wonder organ fails with the inability extract one's butt from the couch). The 2 basic outcomes measured are death or survival.

When I heard that WKO+ had a way of measuring how much work was done during a bike ride called TSS, I had to chuckle. So was a 15 mile ride at zone 1 equivalent to getting a wet willy from your older brother? Was a 3 hour hilly hammerfest with the local Cat 2 roadies the same as getting run over by a bulldozer? Are the 2 basic outcomes death by IF that was too high or survival to train again tomorrow?

After some thought, I realize that the 2 TSS's were quite alike. Though the outcomes differ greatly in degree of gravity, both basically help to figure out just how much a person can take. I'm not surprised that the variables are similiar given the subject is a person under a given amount of stress. Obviously for both training and trauma, the person's physiologic age, state of health will determine how well they recover. Also, the type and amount of stress/injury also determines how well a person survives it and the length of recovery.

When looking at IM training plans, the varieties and philosophies are numerous. Many involve building a "base" with gradual increases in training volume at low intensities then some build phases with moderate increases in intensity before the race day. The EN model starts with building speed/"fast" with higher training intensities at lower volumes then adding increasing training volume closer to the race day. Other training models emphasize training different systems of physiologic performance such as neuromuscular, endurance, speed.

Simply speaking, I think that in order to complete an IM triathlon you gotta do some work. What kind of work and how it's parcelled over a given period of time is expressed in all those training plans and coaching philosophies. I think the real mystery is how much work does a certain individual need to do over a season or seasons, in a given month/week/day to achieve their IM goal. Too little work = maximal athletic performance is not realized. Too much work = the all too familiar injury/illness/ burnout. Imagine there was a TSS calculator where you'd enter your fitness parameters and IM goal then bing! (the universal calculator noise) a number would be spit out that would be how much work you need to do to achieve that goal. Then the next mystery would be how to parcel all that work over time so as to avoid injury and achieve maximal athletic performance--a daily TSS calculator!

That being said, I think most AG'ers will likely never achieve their maximal athletic potential because of time constraints of work and family. The limited time isn't just to train, but time to rest, sleep, get a massage, tend to psychological issues of training and competing. I'm okay with this truth. Triathlon isn't my job, doesn't put dinner on the table---Amen to that! We'd be eating day old bread and water every night if our livelihood was dependant on my triathlon prowess. The reality of this hobby (and that's really ALL it is) and most facets of life is that we need to work within our limitations and be grateful for the opportunity.

Back to my magical TSS calculator: another helpful feature would be what kind of work/training would be done--basically, a set volume and intensity level of each workout. Not every TSS point is created equal. Of course, the higher intensity work will have a higher cost of recovery than a lower intensity one. I agree with Gordo in that the risk of injury is lower at lower intensity training compared to higher intensity training. However, the gains are also lower and the time investment is quite a bit higher. It's less efficient but with lower risk.

So which training plan is the best one? The one that prescribes the right amount of work that will fit into your life in a way that will minimize risk of injury and maximize athletic potential with what you've got. I'm quite sure no coach or athlete on the planet has a Sooper Dooper TSS calculator. I am quite sure that many professional athletes have the physiologic resilience to be overworked and still perform well. Many AG'er follow these athletes and their training programs into a brick wall with their work and family life suffering as well.

For me: the data geek part of me would love to know exactly how much work I should/could do and accomplish that work flawlessly in order to fulfill a numerical expectation. The realistic part of me know that even if I knew exactly how much work to do, I wouldn't do it unless I wanted to. So while the mathematical mystery may be the amount of work to be done, the struggle is really with motivation. Right now I'm very motivated. I just PR'd a bike test, have great confidence in Coach Rich and Patrick and a great community in EN, and have good health. So where's the struggle? The fear of blowing up, test anxiety, wanting to not let any woman wearing makeup at a race beat me, wanting/trying to be "good enough".

So what I think I really need more than a TSS calculator is a slack line...for balance.

I Heart 2.5/2.5's

The results of my bike test at the EN Boston Power Clinic 4 weeks ago revealed that my power at V02max and at FTP were quite close together. If I wanted to increase my FTP (the metaphoric ceiling of my house), then I needed to first increase my V02max (i.e. raise the roof). How convenient that weeks 9-12 of the Outseason started just after that bike test. I had been reading the posts of the November OS crew and hearing off these 30/30's and 2.5/2.5 bike intervals that would increase our V02max.

After a month of those intervals, I was staring down the barrel of another bike test. Despite being sick for half of this last block, I did every single 2.5/2.5 and did them well. Nonetheless, I still had my usual bout of test anxiety. Instead of letting myself be nervous and getting over it, I did what I do best: meticulously plan down to the last detail of a gnat's ass.

Sleep for >8 hours the night before: check.

350 Calories, fat-free, liquid/easy to digest breakfast: check.

Favorite bike shorts and top: check.

iPod bike test playlist: check.

The Air King, our new monstrosity of a floor fan courtesy of my beloved Kevin, positioned so that maximal air circulation occurs while I am in my aerobars. This fan on its lowest setting can generate a windstorm that could propel Magellan across the globe in one gust. Check!

Now for the attitude check: I had confidence in the work I had done during this last block. I knew my FTP had increased, but by how much? Would that increase be enough to thwart any disappointment I might feel? And so what if it ISN'T? Do I really need to put myself in a position to be emotionally crushed by my expectations AGAIN? over a bike test 12 weeks into training? Oh for crying out loud, I need to get over myself!

Besides if my ProTour boyfriend, Fabian Cancellara, could win the prologue at Tour of California with a fever, I could at least get through this bike test without my binky or a diaper change.

But first some machinations about pacing...EN bike tests are 2 x 20 min intervals with a 2 minute rest. The normalized power of the entire 42 min effort = FTP. I had been using Hunter Allen's test of one 20 minute interval with 95% of the average power of that interval = FTP. I started my very first EN bike test holding the watts I thought my FTP should be. That lasted about 10 minutes into the first interval. The rest of the ride consisted of Kitima barely hanging on, generating just enough watts to power a night light.

Greater than my test anxiety is my fear of blowing up. I spent the next 12 weeks of OS trying to better pace 2 x 20. My plan: the first 8-10 minutes of each interval at FTP, the next 8 minutes at a somewhat harder effort, and the last 2 minutes balls out. No bonking, crashing, or blowing up. However, I felt like I still had a couple of gallons left in the tank. Perhaps I've been underachieving this whole time.

My new pacing goal for this bike test: first 6 minutes of first interval at current FTP, 12 minutes at "should" FTP, last 2 minutes balls out. The second interval would be the same except time at current FTP would be reduced to 4 minutes. I wanted to a nearly empty tank at the end, dizzy from the effort, even falling off the bike.

I paced it according to my plan except that for the very last 3.5 minutes I went balls out. The numbers on my Ergomo under current watts were numbers I'd only seen Kevin churn out on the Computrainer (on a tempo ride no less!). I told myself sternly, "These numbers should not be foreign to you!" I finished gasping for air and cross-eyed.

New FTP = 192. A 21 watt increase from 4 weeks ago and a 6 watt PR from last year's test which was done outside! I even negative split the intervals:

NP for 1st interval =190

NP for 2nd interval = 199

NP for last 3 minutes = 220

Holy cow! I sure needed some roof work, eh? Work works---it's speed entering my body and all that EN goodness. I'm gonna relish this small victory and hope that it edges out a sizeable chunk of test anxiety in my head. Now onto days of drooling on the bike because all the watt zones have gone up.

The Day I Swam as Fast as Janelle

Before I joined Endurance Nation, I would go through 4 week cycles that would start with an earnest commitment to improve my swim, get to the pool 4 times a week cuz that's what the pros do, master the 400 IM. By week 2.5, my enthusiasm for chlorinated water would be completely vaporized. At the end of week 4, I'd scold myself into another frustration filled, soul-sucking cycle.
So when I read the chapter in the EN Book about no swimming necessary in the Out Season, the low ROI with swimming, I just about leapt out of my chair and cried, "Hallelujah!" A 90 minute swim isn't just 90 minutes out of my day. It's a 20 min drive one way, 20 minutes of changing, showering afterward, and another 20 min drive home. A 2.5 hour hole in my schedule...for what? Maybe an extra 3 minutes off my IM swim split? If I spent an extra 2.5 hours running and/or riding a week, I'd certainly improve much more than 3 minutes on the bike leg and marathon.
Halfway through my "I don't have to swim!" happy dance, I thought What about Janelle?
My friend Janelle is a super swimmer, a real fishie. Her impeccable form, energetic drive, ability to recognize a problem with a stroke and most importantly, coach someone (namely, me!) to effectively correct it made it worth my while to schlep to the pool a couple times a week last fall. Certainly she would understand my OS reasoning for not swimming and see me again in April when I would start my In-Season and being swimming again. However, she is pregnant--due TODAY. I knew I wouldn't have my personal swim coach for a few months after her labor and delivery. So I made the time investment to swim with her at least 1-2 times a week despite my loathing of the pool.
She definitely made it worth my time with her coaching. My head position, kick, and catch all improved. It was also incredible to see her maintain her form and speed as her belly grew larger. I thought with all my stroke improvements I could catch her by the beginning of her 3rd trimester. No such luck. She was the fastest swimmer at Masters until about a month ago she stopped doing flip-turns, back stroke, and butterfly.
"The gut's too big", she said.
So finally on the day before she was do to have her baby, Janelle and I swam our last swim together for a while. Without much effort I could keep up with her. Was it because I had improved that much with my body position in the water? or because the pregnant woman I'd been chasing in the pool for the last 5 months has double the resistance in the water than me?
Her belly was so big on her otherwise normal sized frame that it didn't even look real--like someone had hung a prosthetic pregnant gut on her. I told her at that size she'd be awesome to draft behind.
While I'm not missing the pool, I'm certainly missing my dear friend and hoping for a swift and uncomplicated delivery and recovery. I'll likely keep swimming once a week so as not to forget all my lessons learned. For the rest of the time, I be doing my "I don't have to swim" happy dance.