Girding my loins

(for my future son, "girding" means to "armor ones self", and by implication "to prepare", and "loins" isn't a dirty word. Stop giggling and get a haircut!)

It's been a busy few hours getting ready for the race. Because the event is in Lake Nockamixon, PA, which is about 2 hours north, and I want to be in place by 8 for registration and to get a primo parking place (which is used as a transition area, so the closer the better!), I am staying in a hotel tonight so that I don't have to be awake at 430 in the morning. That means I have been gathering all of my crap together, getting things to the car, knowing that it's all likely to get rearranged tonight and tomorrow morning, and generally doing what I (in more meditative moments) call: The Ritual of Immaculate Gear.

Basically this involves spreading everything out on the floor, making sure that it works, oiling here and washing there, ensuring correct and logical operation, then casually dropping items into bags from which I will never be able to find them when I need them. Perfectly logical, no?

When I had it all laid out, I decided to take a few cell phone pics to share with you, my (few and rare) visitors; and possibly with you too, my unborn child (who needs to learn to aim better in the bathroom - ask your mother!).

In any case, the race is three main events and a few "team challenges" mixed in to keep the field spread out. Since I'm racing solo, I don't know what the challenges will mean to me. Teams are randomly assigned the order of their events after a scramble at the start so these can come in any order:

5 miles of trail running: competitors get a map with mandatory check points and optional check points. They have to get their race passport stamped at all of the mandatory spots, optional spots are time and/or points bonuses. There's no fixed route, the team decides where to go and how to get there within the boundaries of the competition area.

My chosen tools:

10 miles of mountain biking: similar to the running stage but with bikes.

 

My noble, but not yet race blooded, steed. It's also still unnamed, and that can't be good luck, so tonight I'll work that out.

 

Sundry riding gear:

 

5 miles of paddling: soloists get to use a sit-on-top kayak while teams use 3 person canoes. Same basic plan of collecting checkpoints, but with the added challenge of finding them on shore (or islands, or whatever) and paddling to them. This is the event that worries me since I haven't ever competitively paddled, and the last time I did anything other than a short noodle in the Potomac was in the boy scouts during the Reagan Administration.

 

Rented for the occasion:

 

Other stuff, used to make the day more comfortable, sooth aches and pains, and generally keep over-the-counter pharma in business:

Here's an inventory of what's in this pic (sponsors, please apply via email... no, really, please speak up this stuff adds up!)

• Tecnu: a soap specially formulated to clean off poison ivy oils
• Edurolytes and SportLegs: Salts and such to help fend off cramps and "the burn"
• AccelGel: My preferred gel. These have a touch of protein and a bit of caffeine mixed into the "raspberry snot" making them marginally more tolerable than others for me.
• Hydropel: foot treatment to help prevent blisters.
• Two pairs of sunglasses: eye protection is mandatory gear during the race, having a spare pair in the car can't hurt.
• A Casio MudMan watch: my preferred non-GPS sports watch. Cheap, functional, white (so it's visible if dropped among dark things... like leave, or mud, or the souls of Republicans). Did I mention cheap?
• Some pens: a pen or pencil is also mandatory gear on the course. Why? I dunno, a compass isn't required on this race, so I have no idea how this is useful. Perhaps for signing autographs after my triumphant finish?
• A cooler: no potable water is available in or near the transition area, so we have to supply our own water refills, I'll also stock a some snacks and such.

Additionally I'll have my civi clothes and set of post-event clean clothes, and some basecamp gear in case of technical issues. It's a lot of stuff!

 

This is a "sprint" event (basically anything less than 12 hours) and is expected to be complete-able within 6 hours.  Elite teams will probably finish in 4. Me? I hope to split the difference.

 

That's all the news that's fit to blog, I'll letcha know what happened at the race soon!

 

Fritz

 

Tools of the trade

If this blog is going to focus on athletic endeavors, and it is, and I'm going to blather on about how I feel, felt, or expect to feel as a result of a given activity, and I am, then I should introduce the gizmos and doodads that I plan to use to track my training. This way we can all say, "Oooh, that stretch of Widow Maker Hill where your pulse spiked to 185bpm but you maintained your 10 min mile pace must have been epic!" Or something.

At this point perhaps I should consider activating the "monetize" feature in Google Blogger so that ads related to the dingbats I discuss can be lovingly advertised alongside my super wicked word usements.  Fear not, Fair Reader, I shall spare you this bit of overt lucre grasping - for now.

Now: on with the show!

In this post the focus is on tools that anyone can use to take a snapshot of their current state of being and track changes in their performance (and corpus) over time.

A heart rate monitor
Perhaps the greatest insight for any athlete is knowing whether they are working out hard enough for long enough to do any good. An heart rate monitor (HRM) is the most direct way to track this for yourself, and these days you can get HRMs that can download data to a computer so that you can see how your pulse changed over the course of a workout.


To use an HRM you need to work out a few numbers.  There's a wealth of info on the net about determining your max, target, and anaerobic threshold heart rate values. Most will arrive at similar numbers using methods of various degrees of scientific merit and rigor. The easiest shorthand I've found for adult men is:

     target = 180 - age
     max = whenever you start to puke

Another popular version is:

     max = 220 - age
     target = max * 65%

In either case, you need to experiment and observe yourself while working out. I find that I am doing pretty well when my BPM is between 140-160 but if it gets up to 170 I really start gasping (and risk setting off an asthma attack). My numbers are well predicted by the formulae above, but there are aerobic mutants like Lance Armstrong (or Eddie Merckx, for the oldsters) who can maintain performance at his VO2max, i.e. at the edge of his body's ability to supply oxygen to cells, for extended periods of time. He's not normal. Us normal people should stay at or around our target heart rates.

I use a Garmin Forerunner 210 as my HRM which records my training data in a way that can be downloaded to a computer. You can also get bluetooth HRM straps that work with software running on a smart phone or tablet, which is pretty convenient!

Body Fat Scale
These scales know things about most people that they'd rather keep private! If you're already athletic, regardless of your real or perceived level of "fatness", get one of the models with an "athlete" mode which helps to compensate for higher lean body mass and bone density. I've a "Tanita BC-549" which can show weight, %body fat, level of hydration, BMI, and a number of other data I don't bother paying attention to.

I don't generally track my weight (a straight line is an uninformative graph) but I do weigh myself regularly and notice both my absolute weight and the percent body fat. These can vary a lot even within a single day, which is why the advice is to weigh yourself at the same time every day. Before or after your morning shower is the easiest, but, because you're probably somewhat dehydrated first thing in the morning, your weight may read low and %BF may appear high. Try not to dwell on the numbers as much as their trend ("down" for most of us) and their relationship to one another.

A GPS tracking tool
If you work out outside (run, ride, paddle, walk, golf... kite ski, anything!), associating where you were with how hard you were working provides incredible insight into what works for you and what works you over. My Garmin watch logs GPS data and watches by Timex, Suunto, Motorola, and others provide a similar functionality.

It's worth noting that GPS has problems in heavily covered areas (like deep canyons or cities with high buildings) and it's notoriously poor at representing accurate altitude (vs. position on the globe) but generally you'll get enough info to be useful. Again, as long as the data is consistent within and between workouts, it can be totally bunk vs. "reality".  Here's a trace of time + HRM + Speed + Altitude from a recent ride:

Looking at this I can see that on downhill and on flats I went fast and had a heart rate at or below 150, on climbs my heart rate went up and speed down, etc. I can also see when I stopped, including the extended pause at about the 1 hour mark because one of the guys on the ride had a mechanical problem.

As mentioned in the HRM section, smart phones can serve this purpose, too! Many apps that integrate with bluetooth heart rate monitors also use the phone's built in GPS to track workouts and their data plan to upload directly to a tracking site.

An application that collects your data and lets you do some analysis
Now that you can gather your statistics, you need to track them in some way so that you can a) prove to yourself that you've been training and b) observe whether your training is going in the right direction (more miles per week, more weight hoisted, etc.). It's also critical to track your output so you know when to back off and let your body recover.

It used to be that a spreadsheet and calendar were the tools of choice, but in these internetified days, there are lots of tools (many free!) to track this info:

• Endomondo: my personal choice, device neutral including a smartphone app, nice interface
• Garmin Connect: free for Garmin owners and is well integrated with the PC software
• MapMyRun
• RunKeeper

I like Endomondo, but any tool that you like and that lets you review what you've done will serve this role. Here's an example: 

 

Conclusion

There we go. At this point you have more data at your fingertips than generations of Olympic athletes before you. You can make some objective judgements about your body, your athletic performance, and whether your routes make smiley faces or other patterns when viewed from above. Joy!

Next big post, I'll write a few thoughts in clothing, shoes, and other things not requiring batteries.