SOS Pre-Race: Switching Things Up

I’m racing a triathlon tomorrow. Surprise!

Truly, it’s been a season of surprises. 

"Tri Camp" (aka course preview)

For the first time ever, or at least in a very very long time, I enjoyed the act of training more than the prospect of the race. Now don’t get me wrong—if the race were cancelled (god forbid), I’d be pretty displeased; it’s what has kept me focused on and committed to training all this time. (I do not know how people push themselves without this sort of goal. Kudos to those who can!) Yet as the months ticked by, I realized that more than performing well on race day, I was generally looking forward to fitting this training into my life. It’s a jigsaw puzzle, but I was just generally excited to see how my body would respond to this new endeavor. Would swimming exhaust me so that my run immediately afterward was a slog? (Yes, initially, but as I got fitter the swim actually helped get me loose for the run!) Would biking ever get any easier? (Yes and no: I hate it less, fear it about the same, and am marginally better than when I started, but no one would ever mistake me for a “cyclist” or probably even “triathlete.”) Would running less mileage mean losing running fitness altogether? (No. Although how this translates to an actual running race remains TBD.)

A lot of this was surprising to me—I really tried to go into the experience with a mindset of “if I wind up feeling unfit or generally weird or lonely, it’s okay,” but I’ll admit it: I was nervous. Instead I got more (mostly) welcome surprises. A few worth mentioning:

• Despite putting in at least as many overall training hours as when I’m marathon training, I felt about a third as “beaten down” throughout the four-month training cycle. I know everyone talks about what a “toll” running takes on your body, but I’ve always thought that immensely exhausted, can’t-lift-my-feet feeling was the price of fitness. (After all, back in college when I was swimming doubles and lifting two to three times a week, I could barely drag myself up and down stairs, and I fell asleep in nearly every dark, auditorium-style class.) My “undercarriage” is less pleased with me, and I’ve chafed and blistered in brand new places, but I’d be lying if I said I missed that feeling of utter eyelid-slamming exhaustion around 2pm every day.
• Training alone is not as miserable as I expected. In the past, whenever I’ve had to do hard running workouts alone, I’ve struggled. Not all the time, not to the same degree every time, but more often than not, I failed to hit the prescribed workout 100%. This has trained me to avoid working out alone if at all possible. Yet if you think trying to find a running partner who can run your pace and is willing to run your workout at your (or their) preferred time is hard, try finding someone who is your swimming pace, interested in doing your swimming workout, and can arrive at the same (probably inconveniently located for one of you) pool at the same (very narrow window of) time. Seriously, I dare you. Try it, and then report back. Needless to say, I did every single swim set—and about 90% of my biking and running workouts—alone. And it actually wasn’t that bad.

• 

  So grateful for the guidance and generosity of friends.

  One reason it wasn’t that bad is because most of these workouts were effort-based. “Run 15 minutes at 85%” is not something I’ve done much of, nor is “swim 5x75 hard with 30s rest between each.” I’m used to knowing what pace I’m targeting and trying my darndest to hit it. Those paces, of course, are all numbers, which means you either nail them or you don’t. It’s pretty black-and-white: If you don’t, you failed. But when there are no numbers to hit, you can’t really fail. So this was, if nothing else, a nice vacation away from that little gremlin at the base of my brain who likes to pipe up right when I’m really hurting and declare, “You suck. You will never be able to do this. Every success you’ve ever had was a fluke. This is the real you, and the real you can’t do shit.”
• Another reason working out alone wasn’t so bad is because in two of the three sports (i.e., biking and swimming), I essentially was starting over from zero. A year of COVID meant a year of no swimming, and anyone who knows me knows that I don’t ride bicycles if there is any viable alternative. This means that even in the case where I do have a past self to compare to (I swam collegiately . . . it’s a long story), I know the amount of work that past performance required, and I know that I’ve barely done a fraction of that work. Therefore, I cannot compare to that swimmer. And while I’ve done triathlon before, I’ve never put in any real bike training effort. Therefore it was like being new in these sports, and everyone knows that being new in a sport is the best because improvements are visible in short order, and seeing progress is motivating.
• The last surprise was how flexible I learned to be. Sometimes pools simply were not available when I wanted or expected. (I showed up at a pool more than once only to have the gates locked, no humans in sight.) Bad weather also played a bigger role, as it’s inadvisable to bike or swim outside during, say, a thunderstorm. In these situations, I did my best to be resourceful, but sometimes you just cannot do what you planned. So call it maturity (the gremlin would call it laziness), but for whatever reason, I increasingly found myself being okay with these changes of plans. I hope I can maintain this outlook, because it’s so, so liberating.

Of course, there was one final surprise that was not so great. The fact of the matter is that I cannot seem to make it to the start line of a big race without some sort of crisis happening. This time it wasn’t my mother, father, or sister, it was my cat.

I think we'll keep her.

For those of you who have never owned a pet, you’re probably rolling your eyes. I get it! I didn’t birth this creature; it doesn't share my DNA. For those of you who are pet owners, however, I think you’ll understand that when I say my cat started throwing up last weekend and then did not eat or drink for an entire week, when she curled up in corners on soft surfaces and barely moved day or night, it was a crisis. Tabouli is four years old. She can’t tell us what is wrong, can’t point to where it hurts. And, as I learned on one trip to the vet (there were two in a matter of three days), cats are really, really good at disguising pain. (It’s apparently some sort of survival mechanism?) Thirteen hundred dollars, four stressful Uber rides, three “shot in the dark” medications, two teary breakdowns, and a whole lot of useless googling later, she magically started eating. The day before I left for this race, she went over the wet food bowl, which we kept refreshing, and took a bite. And another bite. And eventually that little spoonful of wet food was gone.

Relief is not something that is added to a person, it’s a release—like a balloon letting out helium, or whatever bad breath huffed into it. So I had about twelve hours to be a saggy, deflated balloon, and now I’m filling back up with nervous excitement. I don’t think I’ll be as full as I might have been, but I can feel the lift. That’s why we do these races: for the flutters of anticipation, and the battle on the course, the triumph at the end. I’m aiming for the finish line of the SOS Triathlon (and if you don’t know what it is, it’s worth a quick read). There’s no guarantee I’ll make it to the end, and certainly no guarantee of how I’ll place. But that’s why we race.

Timberman 2015: Bike Course (Part II)

(Missed Part I about the swim? Never fear, you can read it here!)

The farthest I have ever biked in my entire life is 60 miles, which I did three years ago. The trip took, quite literally, all day. I woke up early, ate breakfast, biked, stopped to meet up with people, biked, stopped for coffee and water refills, biked, stopped for lunch. . . . You get the idea: lots of stopping, and lots of food.

This Timberman bike ride, which was to take place immediately after swimming 1.2 miles, would be the second-farthest I’ve ever ridden and, if everything went according to plan, would happen without any stops at all. This latter fact presented the main conundrum I faced while planning for this race: how, when, and what was I going to eat?

I'm no stranger to endurance sports, just to endurance sports that last a quarter of a day. Marathon nutrition—at least for me, once I figured itout—has been fairly straightforward: a Gu at mile 6, a Gu at mile 13, and Gu at mile 20, with two of the three containing caffeine. However, a marathon has only taken me, at most, three-and-a-half hours. The bike ride of this race alone was going to take me longer than that . . . and then I was going to have to run for thirteen miles.

After collecting and considering a multitude of advice and practicing with a few different foodstuffs, I decided to go with SHOT Bloks. I don’t eat them when I run because I have trouble running, chewing, and breathing at the same time, but my breathing is much less labored on the bike, so chewing while continuing to breathe wouldn’t be as difficult.  And when it comes down to it, I much prefer anything chewable to gels. Gels are just . . . slimy. Plus, with all these little gummy blocks, I could parcel them out and divide up the bike ride into timed "snack breaks." I planned to eat one block every fifteen minutes, with an extra two blocks—at least one of which contained caffeine—on the hour.

In hindsight, I'm not sure if eating exclusively SHOT Bloks was a good nutritional decision, but breaking up the bike into fifteen minute “snack times” was enormously helpful to me mentally.

Oh, look at that, I’d think, glancing at my watch (which I had looped around the handlebar of my bike for easy viewing). Only five minutes left until my next snack. Which flavor should I choose this time?

The first five miles of the race flew by, and then ten, and then . . . and then we hit the steepest hill I have ever attempted to climb on a bike, otherwise known as the Marsh Hill Monster. This is a hill so long and so steep that as I started up it, huffing, puffing, and forcing my legs to grind in their little pedal circles, I actually saw people off to the side who had dismounted and were walking with their bikes. No way am I doing that, I thought, gritting my teeth and trying not to topple over onto another cyclist as my speed dipped down below 6mph.

Nearly one mile and 300 feet of elevation later, we crested the hill. If we have to do that again, I thought, trying to regain my breath and jiggle my water bottle out of its holster, I actually might not make it to the top.

Fortunately, that hill was the only one of its kind. The terrain flattened, and I zoned out (still eating my SHOT Bloks, of course) until mile 30, when I rode past an aid station and saw my GCR teammate K___! We rode the next five miles together, chatting about the race and just trying to keep our minds off of how much our crotches hurt. Seeing her and casually chatting, even for those short few miles, really lifted my spirits. It made me more glad than ever that I had chosen to do this race with teammates.

For the rest of the ride, I focused on keeping my cadence at 80rpm, so that my legs would “spin” and I wouldn’t wear them out. I traded positions with a woman in a black tri kit for a while, but eventually I let her ride ahead and focused on drinking the rest of my water before we got back to the transition area. After all, I still had a run to do.

Click here for Part III: Run to the Finish >>>

Just a Screw

It's those little life events that can really make or break a day.

Today I stayed home from work in order to await the delivery of my bike. (The short story behind this is that I went on vacation last week to a rural area where there would be no traffic and no hills, so I shipped my bike there in order to get some riding in before my triathlon at the end of this month. What gets shipped out must get shipped back, and a $1300 bicycle isn't something I wanted sitting out on my front stoop all day long--so I had to stay home and wait.)

FedEx policy is to deliver between 10am and 6pm, so I knew the bike could arrive literally anytime during those hours. However, the previous pickups and drop-offs had all happened before 1pm, so I was hoping that the timing would be the sam this time.

Alas, it was not to be. The bike finally arrived around 3pm, at which point I dragged the thing up to my apartment and began reassembling it immediately.

Now, the bike was originally packed by someone much more knowledgable and experienced than myself, and although I was able to reassemble the contraption when I arrived at my vacation destination, I then had to repack it into its box after only having watched the disassembling process once. To my own credit (and that of the equally unexperienced people assisting me) we got the bicycle apart and into the box successfully. The question was: had we packed it securely enough to keep it from being damaged in transit?

From what I could tell as I took pieces out of the box, it had arrived in good shape. I encountered a few snafus as I put it back together (screwing the handlebars on backward, for instance), but nothing major . . . until I went to screw in the seat post. There was no screw to screw.

Again, to my own credit, I didn't panic. (Which is surprising for someone who stresses out frequently about minute details.) I collected my wallet and prepared to go out to the local bike shop and try to buy a replacement screw. However, I had an empty bike box taking up most of my living room, so I decided to take that down to the trash first. As I carried it down the steps, I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice if the screw fell out right on my doorstep?"

When I got outside, I took a look around, but the screw was nowhere to be found. I stomped the box apart and began to head back into the apartment when I saw some clumps of pet hair littering the hallway. "T___ won't be happy with me if he comes by and sees this," I thought to myself, so I stopped and grabbed the dustpan. I began sweeping with the broom, and lo and behold, there was the screw!

Safety First! 3x Thanks

Day 3, the theme of which is: Physical Safety.

A___ emerged with life and limb from his bike race today. His bike may not be able to say the same, but as my parents always say, "Vehicles can be replaced. You can't."

R___ returned safely from his nighttime revelry last week. That makes me sound more like his mother than his girlfriend, but I was relieved!

I biked from Prospect Park to the World Trade Center without falling into a pothole, being sideswiped by a bus, or crashing into a pedestrian. Considering that the ride includes a sizable stretch of Flatbush Ave and winds through Chinatown, I always thank my lucky stars when I make it to the end in one piece. Today was no exception.