Ironman training

So we have a 3 day weekend because of Martin Luther King day. Weather was a little cold this weekend and felt a little sick. Did a 12 miler on Saturday morning at 6:54 min/mile pace. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/141692347 I thought we were doing a relax long run but it turned out to be a tempo run instead. It’s painful but I guess it’s a good run. Had my final swimming lesson after the run, our instructor taught us flip turn today. We also practiced backstroke but somehow I kept drinking pool water when I flipped on my back and gave up.

Took a break on Sunday and went ice skating at Citi Pond in Bryant Park, this is my second time ice skate and luckily I only fell once. I still can’t figure out how to brake using my new hockey skate that I bought on Saturday.

Was planning to go for a swim today but the pool closed early so I went for a bike ride around Central Park instead. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/142403473 My legs are still not that strong on the bike, tried to do a quick loop and that took me 20 minutes for 6 miles and my legs were burning after a quick loop. Going anti-clockwise, it’s much much easier biking at the east side than the west side of the park. Watched part of the Total Immersion video today and can’t wait to try out the technique I saw in the videos.

Went for an hour swim yesterday at the NYC Parks pool in Chelsea, finally I can swim 100 yards which is 4 laps in the 25 yards pool. It wasn’t easy and I drank quite a mouthful of pool water doing that. In order to save energy, I am trying to kick once per leg for each stroke I take. Still struggling with breathing sideways, noticed that I was sinking when I tried to breathe sideways from the left side after the first lap. I suspect this might be caused by the way I kick or my pull.

Did a tempo run this evening with my running club in Central Park. We did a mile warm up, 6 miles tempo run at 6:40 min/pace and another mile cool down.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/140714155 

Tempo run is important to run a faster half-marathon or marathon because by running at the level close to our lactate threshold, we can prevent lactate acid from accumulating too fast in our muscles and that can prevent the onset of early fatigue.

Great weather today. After 2 days of cold spell on Tues and Wed, the weather actually hit 60F today. Went to Central Park this morning to cheer for some friends running the Kleinerman 10K. Rode my bike to Nyack and it took me around 1:27 to get to Nyack, it’s around 25 miles 1 way. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/140017531My garmin died half way, so the route on the link is not complete.

Met Dan and Ellen at Rockland county park and got something to eat at Runcible spoon which is a popular hangout place for cyclist. It’s much tougher to bike back on the 9W to the city than to Nyack, my legs are not as strong on the bike and it’s hard for me to keep up. I think running and biking are totally different animals. Not only do they require different sets of muscles but also require different motor unit which is essential to build muscles memory. Read this online “Motor memory refers to recalling specific motor skills. Proper motor skills are required for the muscles, brain, skeleton, joints and nervous system to work together efficiently toward accomplishing a task. Muscle memory is properly defined as the body’s collective ability to memorize and perform well rehearsed muscular contractions”. This sounds like an efficient motor unit will fire the right amount of neurons and communicate to the muscles in the most efficient manner, so that’s probably why marathon training requires such high mileage, not only to train the muscles but the motor unit as well. Same as in biking too I guess.

There are still a lot training I need to do for biking. Got back to the city and went to Daisy May BBQ at 46th and 11th ave to grab a bite, heard it’s one of the best BBQ and it’s actually pretty good. Since the weather is so tempting, I did another 4 loops around Central Park in the afternoon, so in total, probably I rode around 80 miles today. The last loop around Central Park was tough, my legs were pretty tired and my back was aching.

This winter has been mild but weather has been freezing for the passed 2 days, averaging 20F. Weather was 35F today, so decided to go for a run with Niketown last minute, didn’t bring my running gear to work so had to go home and change. Thursday is speedwork day which I prefer because I need to build up speed first before going for endurance. I found that if I run a lot at a slow pace, I will be stucked at the pace forever.

Blame it on the subway, somehow the train took me to Harlem 125th st, so I had to run all the way from Harlem to W 72nd st transverse, took that as my tempo run. It’s around 3 miles, my Garmin watch just managed to get a signal at 110st, did a 6:44 min/mile pace for tempo. Did some speedwork at 6 min/mile pace across the transverse then ran back to the store. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/139768362

Also I got in to the super expensive NYC Half, more than a hundred dollars, so that will be my next race unless I sign up for something sooner.

After having too much fun over the holidays, now is the time to start getting back into training mode. I am strong believer of the 80/20 rule and read this article about an efficient way to train for an Ironman, Minimalist Ironman training. Also found this 13 weeks Ironman training program.

The only thing that is fair to mankind is time, everyone has 24 hours. Ironman training is something that takes up a lot of time, since time is limited, hopefully I can train efficiently and try my best not to let training disrupt my daily life.

My weakest link is in swimming, so for the passed 2 days, I have been going to the pool. Because swimming is all about technique, it’s important to get it right from the start. Like Abraham Lincoln said “If I have to spend 6 hours chopping down a tree, I will spend 4 hours sharpening the axe”, something like that. Went to Barnes & Nobles at Union Square and read “The Art of Swimming” which is about the thing called Shaw Method and Alexander Technique which emphasizes the movement of head, neck and back while swimming. Another book I read is “Total Immersion” which talks about how to swim with the least resistance, like a fish. The max I can swim right now using front crawl is only 50 yards, so I am not looking good.

Some takeaways from those books are:
-While swimming, feels like you are swimming downhill
-Lengthen the whole body as much as possible, extend the hand and make sure one hand is always in the front quadrant
-Turn body sideways while swimming to minimize resistance, rotates shoulders and hips
-Don’t use too much arm muscles, utilize the chest muscles
-Minimize the stroke required, keep distance/stroke ratio high
-Water resistance affect 70% of the speed and muscles only 30%.
-In swimming, drag trumps power so always try to minimize drag/resistance.
-Swim like you are going through a small tube to reduce drag
-Don’t pull your head up, just rotate the head, try to create a small pocket in the water while you pull the water and use the pocket to breathe. It’ll be better to rotate your body to breathe instead of the head.
-Your chest is like a fulcrum, if your legs are sinking, push your chest lower and towards the front.
-Point your hand downwards, beneath your head if your legs are sinking
-Keep the head, neck and back streamline
-Don’t push all your breathe out, some air will help you float, breathe naturally
-Relax

This is a good article/Videos, Total Immersion: How I Learned to Swim Effortlessly in 10 Days and You Can Too by Tim Ferriss, the author of 4 hour workweek on how he learned to swim in 10 Days.

My way of learning how to swim is to watch some good youtube videos with high ratings, read some good books about swimming, get this free lessons from the NYC Parks & Recreation and observe and talk to people in the pool, some people are really friendly and eager to teach. I keep reminding myself, swimming is all about technique.

So 2012 is here! We did the Emerald Midnight run in Central Park when the clock turned Jan 1st! We (me and my running club) got a slot on CNN Live with Anderson Cooper as part of the New year’s celebration on TV!! We did a 4 miler so hope that will bring us to a great start for the New Year.

I bought myself a used 2006 Felt F75 on Jan 1st, a New Year’s present for myself. It’s little impulsive but the seller seems like a nice guy so I just got it. I got the bike for $550 so I can ride with NYCC because they don’t allow tri bike to ride with them. Also I thought maybe I can use this bike as my trainer. My first bike was a used 2005 Specialized transition Comp which I got it last year. So this is my second bike, or actually it’s my 3rd, because I borrowed my GMC Denali to a friend and that got stolen. My weakness is riding uphill, so there will be some work to do here.

Rode 2 loops around Central Park (12 miles) on the Felt today, weather was a little cold and I still need to get a spacer to adjust the height of the handlebar since the bike didn’t fit so well. Anyway, Happy New Year everyone!

So an Ironman is a 2.4 miles swim, 112 miles bike ride and a 26.2 miles run. It’s like swimming along the Hudson river for a distance comparable to the distance from Lincoln Center down to Union Square then bike to Philadelphia and then run a marathon.

Why did I do this to myself?? No idea, probably I wasn’t sure what did I get myself into then or yet.

Maybe because I think this quote is cute
“Shoot for the stars, even if you fail, you’ll still land on the moon”

Hello! Welcome to my blog. So after taking almost one and a half year off from blogging (my old travel blog www.journey26.com/blog), I think I found another thing to blog about this time and is my training for the New York 2012 Ironman. I guess this will be another journey for me which will be challenging and rewarding at the same time (only after I have done it) or it can be very disappointing and time consuming.

Just a continuation of my story from 2009, so after returning from a 10 months backpacking trip across 40ish countries in June 2010, I started to pick up running. I wasn’t a really a runner then but my friend HeeJu got bitten by a running bug and was training for the 2010 NYC marathon then and encouraged me to run with her. I still remember running 3 miles, 2 loops around the reservoir in Central Park in June 2010 and felt exhausted, that was my limit then. I was also looking to get back into the job market back then, so running was something that made me felt productive since I wasn’t employed. Running is something that I find is measurable which is pretty gratifying because I can easily measure the result, my workout and the improvement in pace, distance and stamina. It’s also a cheap way to keep fit, since only a pair of sneaker is required. At first running seemed pretty boring to me but I guess the only thing kept my going is the challenge of setting and achieving goals. I ran my first half marathon in July 2010 which was the Queens half marathon, my goal was to finish it within 2 hours. The weather was sweltering hot and humid then, it’s one of the warmest day of the summer and I had a torturous time finishing it in 1:57, then I ran the Bronx half in Aug, finished it in 1:45 and ran the 2010 Philadelphia marathon in Nov 2010 and finished it in 3:48.

After Philadelphia marathon, I was introduced to this group called Dashing Whippets by Hideki. I started to run some NYRR races with the team and after the 2011 Brooklyn half marathon, which I ran for a friend, I started to meet more people in the team and started attending their training runs. I started to do more interval and tempo training runs and managed to improve my pace, as I ran faster and got some PRs, running has become more satisfying especially I got to meet some cool, positive people from all walks of life in the running community.

I signed up for the 2011 NYC Marathon with Team for Kids which I had to raise fund for charity since I didn’t qualify through the guaranteed entry option. Raising money was a challenged itself and it’s harder than I thought but was lucky to be able to pull through. Did some long training runs for the marathon with the whippets and was really looking forward to the runs every time especially I don’t have to slug through the long runs by myself around Central Park alone in the dark like last year. Before the NYC marathon, my best time for a half marathon was the Staten Island half which I ran in Sep in 1:27. And in Oct, I had high hopes for the NYC marathon and was shooting for a time below 3:10 but instead I got cramps at mile 16 and had to slug through the last 10 miles and walked most of the last 5 miles. I still did it in 3:43 which is a better time than last year, but I was a little disappointed so I went on Craigslist and bought a bib for the 2012 Philadelphia marathon which I ran 2 weeks later with a time of 3:21. So that’s my PR for now, but I am still hoping to hit 3:10 some point soon.

So that’s a summary of my running story.

Regarding biking, I signed up for the TD 5 Borough Bike tour on May 1st 2011 and bought a bike 2 weeks before the bike ride cause I thought it’s a better investment to buy a bicycle instead of renting it (I got a GMC Denali online). The ride was only around 40 miles long, it’s pretty fun and wasn’t too bad at all. Since I got a bicycle, my buddy Jacob invited me for a bike ride, we rode from midtown to Cold Spring which was around 60 miles on a weekend. We met Merryl along the way and she mentioned about a sprint triathlon that she signed up for. That got me started to think about triathlon. After attending a seminar by NYRR about triathlon, that got me excited. Furthermore, WTC decided to bring the Ironman to NYC. After thinking about it for a few days, on June 15th, once they open up the registration page at 12pm, I signed up. All the $895 slots were sold out in just 11 minutes, I couldn’t believe I didn’t get a spot because I spent time filled up those stupid questionnaires. The next available spots were charity slots and that cost $1600, my hands were hesitant to hit to button because it’s so pricey, but my unconscious mind just said fuck it, so I ended up paying a crazy amount for the most expensive sporting event I have ever signed up. Next step was to buy a triathlon bike and I ended up getting a used Specialized Tri bike in Westchester through craigslist. My first long ride was to Poughkeepsie, upstate NY from the city which was 90 miles away, I did it all by myself and was pretty proud about that. Joined New York Cycling Club, and joined a few of their rides but they dislike tri bike, so I stopped riding with them. Did the NYC Century bike ride on Sep 18th 2010, which was fun. It’s a 100 miles ride across the 5 boroughs, it took a long time but got to see a lot of the city which was awesome. Biked a couple of times during summer, thought that will be a cross training to improve my running time, but don’t think that helped a lot, running and biking are just different animals even though both use a lot of our cardiovascular fitness. That’s my biking story, now comes to the swimming part.

So my biggest problem is in swimming. I can’t swim freestyle at all, not even 10 yards. I can swim breaststroke but that’s not usable in triathlon because it’s too slow and used up too much leg muscles. I have been procrastinating about swimming for the whole summer because I was just so concentrated in running. So I signed up for a membership with the NYC Parks & Recreation in Oct and was lucky enough to get a free swimming lessons. My first lesson was in mid Nov 2010, currently I have taken 5 lessons and can swim 50 yards in the pool now. Swimming is my weakness and I am still pretty concern about open water swim, but just have to do it one step at a time I guess. It’s too late to back out now.