Made2Move Performance Training

Nailed it

That’s what I did to my treadmill interval workout today. Nailed it. Completely nailed it. Thanks also to Pepto-to-go, which, had I known about it 10 years ago, would have saved me a lot of bellyaching. Pun intended.

As I stated in my last post – the review of Week 6 – this week brings about an increased level of intensity and effort; it is my hard week. I had a good lifting session this morning, and I am happy to see progress once again with my deadlifts, since my deadlifting had been at a big stall since mid-June. Little steps, little steps. Because little steps will get you to where you want to go. So won’t writing things down and recording them. I have been much more diligent about this thus far, and I think that is also a large contributor – I know the weight, sets, reps, if it felt good, light, or too heavy, or if something needs to be changed. Why wouldn’t you record what you’re doing?! It’s a big investment, and I want to do it right. I want to… NAIL IT.

The afternoon prescription involved some time on the treadmill. Threshold intervals, to be exact. Five minutes at pace (sorry, but paces are between my coach and I, so…me, myself, and I), and 2 minutes recovery – no walking! Not so bad, right? Then you do it 3-4 more times. However, you increase the incline each time, and go back to zero on the last one (so, 0% – 1% – 2% – 3% – 0%). It doesn’t feel too bad until you get to the three percent incline. Five minutes suddenly seems a lot longer. This week, though, I noticed a greater feeling of strength in my legs, I was feeling more efficient with my movement, and my oxygen consumption was definitely improved. So, what does all that mean? I’m getting faster, stronger, and more efficient at a faster pace! Keep it comin’! Let’s keep going!

I have one more cycle of these intervals; they fit perfectly with my plan, as each week they increase in time, and then recover on the fourth week. The first week is 3:1, second week 4:1, third week 5:2. After this next cycle, it will be time to start introducing more challenging speed routines, and I am confident that by this time, my hip/back/hamstring complex will be completely ready and up to task. I completed today’s session without a wink of ache or pain, so another cycle to fully acclimate to my re-found strength is a good idea – suddenly incorporating a major jump in intensity now would be foolish. Allow me to use a financial comparison: if you win $100, it is better to save it and/or invest it and watch it grow. Turning around and immediately spending it on lottery tickets could leave you with one million dollars, yes, or, most likely, no money left at all. Got it? I’m investing my strength!

Get out there and nail it!

Week 6 in Review

It is once again Sunday evening, the close of another training week. It is the last week of November, which is also witness to that terrific holiday: Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is not a holiday about food. It is not a holiday about shopping. It is a holiday about…thanks. Giving thanks. Being grateful and expressing gratitude toward all that we have. Quite honestly, I believe that shopping the day of Thanksgiving or even the day after – that whole “Black Friday” thing – is in direct contradiction to what Thanksgiving is. How blind we’ve become. Such a shame.

“Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.”

– W.T. Purkiser

But anyway! I am not here to lecture on my thoughts about cultural observances. Back to the training. My last post gave you a look into my strength training routine, and a little theory behind it. Since that time of the week, I have had an unscheduled rest day, which would have been Thursday, as – for the first time in I don’t know how long – I did not have the time to get a session in. Do I worry about this? Is all my fitness lost? Is my plan ruined? Not in the least. I keep moving, I’m not going to waste precious energy getting worked up about it. Besides, it meant I was that much more rested for the trainer session I had scheduled for Friday! Friday’s trainer session involved RPI: Race Pace Intervals. This is the first time I have introduced these into my training, and they totally kicked my butt. Awesome. This workout involved warming up for a solid 30 minutes, going at my goal race pace – or, since I do not have a speedometer on my trainer, I go by effort – for 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of recovery, and then another solid 30 minutes of effort, of course followed by cool-down.

Right angle pose. Finally able to get my whole palm on the floor, AND keep my shoulders nice and open.

Saturday was a long run, which went well in the chilly temps. Minus some slight hamstring tightness and the little feeling of fatigue in my legs from Friday’s session, I felt pretty good. I was back on the trainer this morning (Sunday), for a good, solid, hour. And it was solid, alright. The afternoon followed up with 90 minutes of yoga. I’m getting much better at this. My strength is greatly increasing, and my flexibility as well. It is amazing to me the differences that I am seeing, and how these differences are also transferring into the rest of my training.

Week 6 was the second build week in my second cycle, so Week 7 is about to be the final build week (the hardest one!) before a recovery week. I’m looking forward to seeing what I will be able to do this week. Bring it on.

Citius – Altius – Fortius

Faster. Higher. Stronger.
(cue music)

The Olympic motto. These very words conjure up images of strong, fast, agile men (and maybe women) of omnipotent ability. Of men and women who are supremely physically conditioned, going into battle and sprinting around tracks. And then…

There’s me…

I am 5 feet 2 inches tall. I weigh 107 pounds. I’m small. If I had to go two days sans sustenance, I probably wouldn’t see daylight of the third (those that know me and how often I eat would believe this). I am training for an event – full speed ahead – that requires an energy expenditure and metabolic demand greater than most any other endeavor experienced by mankind.

More times than I can count, I have heard the words “you’re too small” and “there’s not enough of you”. Well. I love a challenge. I don’t love being discounted.

Strength training is very important to me, and pertinent to my success in triathlon. In fact, I can chalk a great deal of my success up to the amount of strength training I do, and the strength exercises I perform on a regular basis. I like to be stronger than anyone else out there, and I am quite certain that it is my strength (coupled of course with the rest of my training) that gets me through these events so successfully, at my “so small” stature.

I have learned the value of doing things that you don’t always necessarily like to do. The menial tasks, the nit-picky parts of training – technique, skills, and form – pay great dividends in the long run. They contribute to make a greater part of the whole, and…to make the whole greater.

Everyone wants to go fast and hard all the time – it is what looks most impressive to everyone else. But come race day, everyone else who took the time to do the little things, the menial things, will be the ones passing you. They will recover faster than you. They will be stronger than you. And they will last longer in this sport than you do. Practice counts, but only if it is a means to an end result – an effective one. NOW what’s more impressive?

I love strength training, and I love to do leg work. After all, they are what carry me through! Squats and deadlifts are a mainstay in my programs, but I also like to throw in some fun, unique, variations such as the sliding single-leg squat.

Starting position – towel under one foot, standing tall.

Bottom position. Only squat down as far as you can comfortably maintain form – maintaining spinal alignment, head up, chest up, knee tracking forward.

Bottom position, side view. My left leg is doing all the work, the right leg merely slides along for support and added stability. This is great for mimicking the demands of cycling and running, and to work out any strength imbalances between the left leg and the right leg.

This exercise is great for increasing the strength of your leg muscles individually, without the effect of the stronger side compensating for the weaker one. Specifically, the muscles that are worked are: three muscles of the quadriceps group – rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, and vastus intermedius; the gluteus medius, and the gluteus maximus. The muscles of the back and front of the core (abdominal) also contribute, by keeping your posture correct. This is of paramount importance in the latter stages of an Ironman race.

Citius – Altius – Fortius. Faster – Higher – Stronger.

(From the Olympic website) It was the Dominican priest Henri Didon who first expressed the words in the opening ceremony of a school sports event in 1881. Pierre de Coubertin, who was present that day, adopted them as the Olympic motto. It expresses the aspirations of the Olympic Movement not only in its athletic and technical sense but also from a moral and educational perspective.

It is you who decides what you can do, what you will do, where you will go, and how well you will do all of these things. There is always a way to succeed. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you cannot. I believe I have stated this before: if you always listen to the negative things, you’ll start to believe them. Don’t let yourself fall into that.

Oh, and for the record, two-time defending Ironman World Champion and fastest woman out there, Mirinda Carfrae, is 5’3″ and 114 pounds.

I’m too small? Whatever.

The Week’s End

It is Sunday evening, just past the 6pm hour, and I’m (not-so-)patiently waiting for the oven to declare its contents (lasagna!) ready for consumption. I had a good workout on the trainer today, and I immediately followed it up with one of my new yoga DVD’s from Rodney Yee. I love Rodney Yee. After 30 minutes of this “slow-pace” yoga, however, I may not have been loving Rodney Yee so much. Nonetheless! I will appreciate every new challenge, as I realize the benefit to me, and not just for my Ironman training – because my life (and my athletic life!) does not end when Ironman does.

This week (Week 5) was witness to a rather big development: the disappearance of my hip pain. And it wasn’t a kidnapping whereby it only returned a couple of days later – it seems to be gone for good. Do not send out any APB’s on this please, as I am not looking to receive it back. Instead, I will continue forward, keeping with my moderately progressing training plan for the next couple of weeks, to ensure that I do not start to over-do things and, as a result, start experiencing hip pain again. This is a large boost of confidence for me; the amount of strength I am feeling right now definitely exceeds any level I have previously attained. That is good, this lets me know I’m really getting somewhere. I owe a lot of this, I believe, to my new-found love of the practice of yoga, as it has made blatant the many imbalances – strength, flexibility, and otherwise – that are found throughout my body.

This is not bad, however, as it has allowed me to tailor my strength routine (and the rest of my training) toward these imbalances, and the task of restoring a homeostatic state, if you will. I attribute this focus to the strength I am feeling, the greater efficiency in which I move, and, of course, my improved flexibility!

So, with these improvements, I look forward to the tests that Week 6 brings, experiencing the feeling of strength and efficiency I have gained while getting through them, and I look forward with ever-increasing excitement to that ultimate test – race day.

“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
– John Wooden

The Morning Run

Thursdays are usually my swim day, but since my beloved YMCA pool is closed until December 1st for repairs and maintenance, I had to adjust my schedule. Today was either going to be another trainer day, or, if I was feeling really good, a quick little morning jaunt. When I awoke to 27 degree temperatures, nary an air molecule moving, and not a pain manifesting in my hip, I couldn’t resist the urge to get outside. So, I had my usual pre-workout PowerBar, bottle of water, gave it some time to digest, and at 7:30am I went skipping out the door.

I don’t mind running in the cold; in fact, I quite enjoy it. I love all of the seasons, and I love being able to experience them through my running, my swimming, and my cycling. I love to be outside. You just have to be prepared, and it doesn’t take that much.

“I have no control over how fast my opposition can run. It’s not like I can tackle them. All I can do is work harder. Smarter. Train when my opposition doesn’t. In blood-chilling temperatures. Rain. Wind. Sleet.”
– Unknown

Tricks of the trade: wearing latex gloves underneath your regular gloves will ensure that your digits are kept warm for the entire duration of your outdoor stint. You can buy all those fancy, expensive, “your hands will never be cold” gloves that you want, but do they ever really work? No. Go get a box of latex gloves. You can get 100 for about five bucks. Best cold-weather running investment you will ever make. Hands down (pun intended).

Back to the run. My Thursday morning run turned out to be no ordinary morning run. It marks the first day, the first, real, true, official day that I have felt legitimately AWESOME on my run. No back pain, no hip pain, no tightness in my hamstrings. Nothing. Not before I started, not once I got going, not when I finished. Hooray! It has been a while in the making. I first had hip pain at the beginning of June, it only worsened until I decided to do something about it at the end of July (big mistake there, waiting too long). It wasn’t until the end of October that I graduated from the care of my chiropractor, and was put into the honor-system – doing my assigned stretches and exercises on my own (on my honor) to ensure that I would continue to improve, and banish my pain for good. I kept on the honor system, and you know what? IT WORKED. As with anything, if you stick with it, if you’re patient, if you give it time, you will see success. Too many people expect results in a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months time. When they don’t get these results, they get frustrated, give up, and move on to something else. This is very foolish and naive. It is absolutely impossible to expect the body to turn around and heal in so short a time frame, especially if you’ve had pain and imbalances for quite some time. By constantly changing modalities, your body never gets the proper time it needs to see results, so you’re left continually frustrated and out-of-order. Come on now, don’t do that.

I stuck with it. It took time. It worked. I will continue to stick with it. I feel great. And I had an awesome morning run.

Did I mention it started to snow whilst I was out? It did. It was great. It was…awesome.

Bad Days

I am going to make a confession.

Sometimes, I have a bad day.

Yes, I really do have them. And yes, they really do happen to everyone. But bad days are only as bad as you make them out to be, and only truly become bad if you let them influence you in a negative manner. They can be hard to come back from, it can be hard to move forward, but you have to learn. Yes, learn. Don’t be afraid to do that.

When I say I have a bad day, I mean a bad day. I entered a half-marathon in September – it would be my first attempt at the distance since my nagging hip/back/hamstring pain had sidelined a great deal of my training. I had been building up my mileage, I was feeling good, and the weekend before the race, I easily cruised through my 12-mile run in under 90 minutes. Bring it on, I said.

Race day brought perfect conditions, but already upon waking up, I was feeling…off. I felt tired. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t get motivated and excited. That’s ok, I thought, once the gun goes off I’ll be fine. The gun sounds, and the pounding of feet take over the road. I hit the first mile in 6:18. I told myself this wasn’t bad for just getting back, even if it wasn’t where I wanted to be. But my legs were heavy. That 6:18 felt almost like a sprint. By mile 3, thoughts of logging my first DNF were already in my head. I started to cry. I was so upset and frustrated that this wasn’t turning into the race I had hoped. By the half-way point I was mad. I hated this. I hated running. I hated racing. Why do I do this sh*t? It’s hard. I swore. I tried to run faster. I blew up. And then…I gave up.

I. Gave. Up. I stopped caring. I -and I can’t believe I am going to admit to this – stopped, and walked. For the first time, in a 13.1-mile race, I walked. More than once. I was struggling to keep a 10:30 pace. I was a former nationally-ranked race walker who could walk a mile in 7 minutes! And now I couldn’t even run that fast! I’m a half-marathon course record holder, and I’m now falling to the back! I’m a national champion triathlete! I’ve been to a world championship! This doesn’t happen to me!

But it did, and it does. To anyone and everyone. No matter how you’ve prepared, anything can happen come race day. The only thing that will keep you going after this is your attitude. I came to terms with this performance, because I later realized some things. 1) I was out of balance – mentally, emotionally, even my physical training wasn’t quite on par to handle the load that day, and I knew this. 2) It’s not the end of the world. I know who I am, and what I am capable of. And I know that I will do it. So, I picked myself back up, and continued on. I am not about to let that bad day have any more of my time.

If you listen too long to complaint, to negativity, you might start to believe it. Don’t do that to yourself. It’s hard, I know.

Tina, you may say, this is not recent, why are you telling us this? What has it got to do with anything? Well, for one, I felt I should confess. Two, because I can tell you with certainty right now, that this won’t be the last time I’ll be writing about a bad day. But I won’t let it cloud the numerous good ones that I have already had, and will have.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment”
– Marcus Aurelius

The Annoying Fly

‘Tis the season for indoor work. Specifically – time on the indoor bike trainer. This has never been a favorite activity of mine, because going no where on a bike is significantly less exciting than being outdoors with bountiful scenery all around, all the wonderful scents to experience, and the hills, flats, and roads to encounter. Yes, being inside on a bike going nowhere is indeed nearly mind-numbing. However, I have found a way to (moderately) counteract this boredom conundrum. First of all, I have found that my time trial bike rides more smoothly on my trainer than my road bike, and is also more comfortable to plop myself upon for whatever amount of time is relegated for that day. Ok, so the comfort problem is solved. Second, I need something to keep my mind occupied; my attention span is comparable to that of an annoying fly – going everywhere constantly all the time rarely settling on one thing for any length of time. I like to watch something, but television shows don’t keep my attention. I like to listen to music, because the beats keep my focus and motivation going, but I can’t listen to music and watch tv at the same time…huh…so…solution?…MUSIC VIDEOS. Yes, yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have found that by creating a YouTube playlist of all the music videos of the songs I like to listen to makes trainer time significantly more exciting, and almost something I actually look forward to. No, I did not invent this idea, I am certain, but I was pretty darn happy when it came to mind (kinda like one of those “duh” moments).

I am in Week 5 (microcycle 2, macrocycle 1) of my “official” training program; I just came off of a recovery week, so this week begins a build week. Today’s trainer time workout involved some sustained effort intervals followed by some Tabata intervals (yes, to all of my clients, I really do do these too) followed by some more sustained effort intervals. Grand total time amounts to just over an hour. I like to put in work when I’m on the trainer, and I like my training to be efficient, so I’d rather put in less time at greater effort than more time at less effort (brilliant, I know, but I did not invent this school of science, either). I’ll delve more into the science-y stuff as we go along, but for now…back to the music!

What is my go-to warm-up song? Pharrell Williams “Happy”. You can’t go wrong with this. You can’t listen to that song and NOT be happy afterward. Seriously. Perfect way to start some time on the trainer! My workout song-of-the-moment is Fall Out Boy’s “Centuries”; that’s when the real work begins. It manages to be the closing song of a set of three for my sustained effort intervals.

What do I do when the bike work comes to a conclusion? Stretching time! Or, more specifically, yoga time. Only 20 minutes today, but plenty sufficient enough. Recovery, and enabling your body to recover faster, is so very important in training. It is the recovery that makes your body stronger. I cannot hammer this home enough. This is how I approach my training: from the recovery standpoint. I look at what I am trying to do, the amount of energy and effort it will require, and compare it to my current rate of recovery, and how my body responds during that time of recovery. This lets me know if I am fit enough to handle the next load, or if something needs to be adjusted. Plenty more on all of that to come. Oh, believe-you-me, there will be.

With Gratitude

It is of great importance that I initiate this blog with a note of gratitude, of dedication to the people that have made all of this possible. I would not be registered for an Ironman had it not been for 23 extremely generous and wonderful contributors the names of whom I will refrain from posting (for the time being). They are my supporters, my sponsors, and why I am able to take part in this amazing and exciting journey.

As with any endeavor, the hardest part is getting started – but as with all endeavors, everything begins with that one, single, step. From there we place another, single, step. We continue on in this manner – placing one step after another – and before we know it, we have journeyed quite a distance, gained many a valuable insight, and been witness to and participant in many wonderful experiences – whether positive or negative. They all have a purpose – don’t ever forget that.

To this I say: Always keep that one step in mind. Always maintain perspective.

The first single step in my Ironman journey was getting registered. From there, I will share with you all of my proceeding steps to arrive at this destination, what I learn along the way, and the path of life it promotes me to follow. This will also serve to keep me honest about my training – with eyes all around, I don’t want to let anyone down! I promise to put forth my best effort.

As I draw this post to a close, again I say “thank-you” and offer my sincerest appreciation and heart-felt gratitude to those who have enabled me to do this; appreciation can never be displayed enough. I want everyone to know that.

Thank you.

Here begins my journey…