Short Week

This will be a short week because I am going on vacation on Wednesday night. I'm headed to the Grand Targhee ski resort in Alta, WY. So excited.

On Monday, the workout du jour was a 2,000 yard swim completed in 41:48 with splits of:

• 1st 500 yds: 10:15 (10:20)
• 2nd 500 yds: 10:36.5 (10:16)
• 3rd 500 yds: 10:26 (10:36)
• 4th 500 yds: 10:30 (10:34.5)

Overall, about the same as two weeks ago Monday (those times in parentheses). Granted, I only did 2,000 instead of 3,000, but hey, I had a busy weekend. :-)

Today, I did the normal reverse tri at LA Fitness with Don.

• A fast (14:02) 2-mile treadmill run
• Leslie's ("Tuesday is our hard day") 45-minute spin class
• 1,500 yards in the pool

I was quite pleased to be able to complete the swim in 28:31.66 (with negative splits of 9:37, 9:30, 9:25). 45 seconds faster than January 10th's time for the same distance.

Looking forward to a few days of relaxation and skiing!

Back On The Bike!

Did my first long(ish) bike ride of 2008 today. Don, Derek, and I rode 26.75 miles this morning on the “DFW Loop” - activity details at http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/5035870. We considered doing two laps for 50+ miles but thought better of it as we were tired (and my knee was complaining) after yesterday’s run and it was a little bit on the cold/windy side (we started at 7:30 AM).

Completed the ride in 1:42 with an average speed of just under 16 MPH. It's not super fast, but acceptable as I get back into the cycling groove.

Looking forward to the next one!

Cowtown Half-Marathon

The 2008 Cowtown Runs drew quite a large crowd. With 3,200 kids and almost 2,000 adults completing the 5K, another 2,000 each for the 10K and half-marathon and 685 and 117 finishers for the marathon and ultramarathon respectively, there were almost 10,000 runners crossing the various finish lines and probably over 12,000 runners competing in all the events.

Personally, I had a great race at the 2008 Cowtown half-marathon today. I didn't quite make my goal time of under 1 hour and 50 minutes; however, I still set a PR (personal record) of 1:51:23 with a pace right at 8:30/mi for the 13.1 miles. This is two minutes faster than the Mote In Motion half-marathon back in November and that course was flatter/faster and before the knee injury. Yes, progress!

I started off by joining a fellow RVG runner, Richard, for the first eight miles - until he had to split off to do the full marathon. My pace up to that point was around 8:51/mile, which was disappointing at the time since I had to run 8:23/mi to do a 1:50 half-marathon. Actually, it turned out that 8:51 was a pretty good pace because, as you can see from the elevation chart below, the first two-thirds of the race was mostly uphill. (The half-marathon and full marathon courses were identical up until about mile 8.3 and they rejoined at mile 11.1/24.3 to the finish line).

After the half/full split, the course was downhill until about mile 11 which was a nice reprieve and gave my heart rate a chance to drop before my final push at the end.



My time was good enough for 49th out of 157 in my age group, 317 out of 1068 males, and 410 out of 2033 finishers. I'm definitely getting better.
Full results at http://results.active.com/pages/page.jsp?eventID=1548190.
My personal result page at http://results.active.com/pages/oneResult.jsp?pID=32956735&rsID=59627

I really enjoyed this race. We had nice weather, the crowds were big enough to be festive but not so crowded as to be annoying, and the course was decent despite the hills. The expo and after-race refreshments were quite substantial and we got a nice medal after crossing the finish line. I look forward to doing the full marathon at next year's Cowtown.

Taking It Easy (Relatively Speaking)

After Tuesday's bonking episode, I was a little wary of pushing too hard ... but on the other hand, "tick-tock" - the big race is rapidly approaching.

Wednesday: One-hour spin class with moderate intensity. Heart rate stayed between 140 & 160 BPM for the most part.


After the cycling, I hit the pool for a 2,000 yard swim completed in 42:31. Not tremendously fast, but my pace was fairly consistent.

• 1st 500 yds: 10:36
• 2nd 500 yds: 10:30.5
• 3rd 500 yds: 10:37
• 4th 500 yds: 10:47

Thursday: A short run (1 mile at 5% incline) - got to the gym late - with Don before spin class, and then the 45-minute cycling session. Definitely not as intense as Tuesday's workout - my heart rate never went above 170 BPM and actually stayed below 160 BPM for most of the spin class - until the end when we did an "8-minute hill".

Afterwards, some swimming. Don is a decent swimmer too and motivated me to push my speed. I ended up completing 1,000 yards in 18:49 with a 300 yard split of 5:23. A new personal best for both of those distances.

• 1st 500 yds: 9:12
• 2nd 500 yds: 9:37

Tomorrow, I will have a day off before Saturday's Cowtown Half-Marathon.

Bonked

Worked it a little to hard today and bonked as a result.

Started a reverse tri at LA Fitness. Ran hard for 2 miles (7:00/mi pace) on the treadmill and then joined Don and Wilhe for the spin class. About 30 minutes into it, I think I pushed it too hard and felt a little faint. Even Don, Wilhe, and our instructor could tell - they said my face "turned white" and my eyes got bloodshot! After that, I took it a lot easier - you can see my lowered heart rate after the 45-minute point of the workout - and recovered somewhat as a result.



Looking back, the problem probably resulted from a combination of several factors - not enough breakfast (just a granola bar), limited nutrition during a hard workout (one AccelGel), and a very tough (continuous) run and cycling session.

The episode was definitely not pleasant so I'd like to avoid doing that again in the future!

I did a cool-down in the pool and felt much better. Was even able to swim (slowly) about 750 yds.

TMS Sprint Duathlon

Did my first duathlon this morning at Texas Motor Speedway. Here were my stats (thanks, Matt, for showing me how to use MultiSport mode on the Garmin Forerunner 305 - one of these days I'll actually sit down and read the manual for the uberwatch :-) - click image to enlarge:

Everything looks pretty good - except for the (hopefully erroneous) max heart rate during the second run – 240 BPM (gulp!) Officially, TMS Sprint Duathlon was supposed to consist of a 2-mile run, 15-mile bike, and another 2-mile run. However, as you can see from the numbers above, the runs weren’t quite 2 miles longer, but the bike was 1.5 miles longer than 15 so I guess that more than made up for it.

The weather for the race wasn't bad - temperatures were mild and the rain from Friday and Saturday completely stopped - but the wind, now that was something else. The forecast said 15-17 MPH winds from the WNW and we definitely felt it coming around the south and west sides of the track. With the wind at my back, I was cruising at 25-30 MPH in many occasions but then came the wind (and a hill!) and my speed dropped to as slow as 10 or 11 MPH. Ouch! And we had to do the 5-mile loop 3 times. Double (or triple) Ouch!


(Note: I think that spike at the 16-mile mark is from when I rode under the tunnel to get back into the speedway from the outer bike loop and my Garmin momentarily lost its GPS signal. I definitely don't remember flying in at nearly 40 MPH.)

So in the end, I completed the TMS Sprint Du in 1:24:52. This got me 7th place out of 19 in my age group (M 35-39), 49th out of 127 men and, overall, 59th out of 188 competitors total. And it was a lot of fun racing inside (for the run and transition area - the bike was outside) the NASCAR stadium.

I'm pretty happy with my performance. There wasn't any particularly weak area today. Just have to run a little faster and bike a little faster. No recipe for that except more hard work and training. There were a lot of hard core runners and cyclists (with some REALLY nice bikes) in the race, so I'm glad was still able to hang in the top third of the competitor field.

Official results at http://www.mychiptime.com/searchevent.php?id=292

Preparing To Do a Du

I'm going to be doing my first Duathlon on Sunday - the Ironhead Texas Motor Speedway Sprint Duathlon - a 2-mile run, 15-mile bike, and another 2-mile run. So I'm using this week to do some final prep work.

Monday: A 3,000 yard swim workout. Okay, so swimming is not part of a duathlon, but my knee still needs a little more recovery from Saturday's run/bike. I completed the swim in 1:03:49 with splits of:

• 1st 500 yds: 10:20 (10:08)
• 2nd 500 yds: 10:16 (10:32)
• 3rd 500 yds: 10:36 (10:49)
• 4th 500 yds: 10:34.5 (10:52)
• Accel Gel & water break: 0:32 (0:39)
• 5th 500 yds: 10:48 (10:54)
• 6th 500 yds: 10:44 (10:50)

54 seconds faster than two weeks ago (January 28 - those split times in the parentheses). Getting faster!

Tuesday: Another reverse tri at LA Fitness. Don joined me for a 3-mile treadmill run, followed by Leslie's 45-minute spin class, and then 1,000 yards in the pool. It was a tough workout, but I think I did a pretty good job. I was able to finish 3 miles on the treadmill in just over 23 minutes (7:45/mi pace) - which is a fast pace for me, especially since I did the first mile at an 8:30 pace to warm up. During the bike/spin, my heart rate stayed at the upper aerobic range (occasionally crossing into anaerobic) as Leslie has started a pattern of tough classes on Tuesday and easier ones on Thursday. My swim went quite well: 1,000 yds in 19:15 with 500 yd splits of 9:36 and 9:39. This is faster than the tri swims last week and my time for the first 300 yds was 5:40.

Wednesday: Decided to take a day off. Ahh ... so relaxing!

Thursday: Time to work on the bike-to-run transition. The reverse tri features a run-to-bike - which is good practice for the duathlon coming up this weekend. After spin class, Don, Wilhe, and I ran on the treadmills. I tried to push my pace - no need for a warm-up since we just biked for 45 minutes - and completed the first two miles in 14:50. Jogged/walked for another 12 minutes to complete three miles.

Friday: Some more swimming. Giving my legs a rest. Not as far, nor as fast, as Monday, but I'll put it down to Friday blahs.

• 1st 500 yds: 9:57
• 2nd 500 yds: 10:17
• 3rd 500 yds: 10:48
• 4th 500 yds: 10:57
• Accel Gel & water break: ??? (hit "stop" instead of "lap" - argh)
• 5th 500 yds: 10:36

Saturday will be a rest/off day. Actually, I will probably be doing a ton of errands before heading over to Bicycles, Inc. for packet pickup and bike/helmet safety inspection - so describing tomorrow as an "off day" is probably stretching it.

So all in all, a good week.

Injury Status

Even though the pace of yesterday's run was slow, it was the longest distance that I've completed since my IT-band troubles. My right knee was a little sore yesterday afternoon/evening and this morning it's still not 100% (walking and going up stairs are okay; going down stairs still a little painful), but overall it's recovering well. I think the PattStrap is definitely helping to slow/minimize the rate of IT-band the friction during the running.

I'm happy that I'm able to be able to run again, but annoyed/confused that my the rest of my body/legs - especially my LEFT knee - is totally ready for 16+ mile runs while my right knee is still a little gimpy.

More rehab work is needed ...

The Road To Recovery

Met up with Derek and Don T. this morning. Derek, my TNT mentor, was flying out to Vancouver late this morning to visit family and go skiiing (I'm jealous), but wanted to squeeze in a "quick" run before going to the airport. Don T. is training for the full Marathon at Cowtown and joined us.

So we met at 7:00 AM at Oak Grove Park (map link) and did the Lake Grapevine Runners and Walkers Club's "west route", which is 8.3 miles for the out-and-back. We finished it in about an hour and 20 minutes (about a 9:38/mi pace). Don's marathon training schedule had him doing a 16 mile taper run today so we did the same route again after a 10 minute break at our cars (to refill water belts, grab gels, and hit the restroom). The second time was at about the same overall speed - a little more walking during the middle but we picked up the pace for the last mile - for about another 1:20 of running. So in the end, Don and I ended up doing 16.43 miles in 2:49:24 (inclusive of the "car stop"). That works out to a 10:18/mi pace, which is not too bad considering the 10 minute break and that the course was quite hilly.

After the run, I did a little cycling. Originally, the plan was to ride about 30 miles, but because we had run for so long, it was getting late (and I had lunch plans) so I only did about 14 miles. I started my bike ride by again following the west route but this time stayed on the run/bike trail (earlier we had run on the sidewalks of the busier streets) for all 8 miles. Then, contined on with the first 2.25 miles of the east route and also toured some of the parks south of Lake Grapevine. The final tally was 13.72 miles in 57:10. That's an average speed of only 14.4 MPH but some parts of the bike trail were winding and I had to slow for narrow bridges - and hey, I did just run more than 16 miles. :-)

Hmmm, it feels odd to have run 16.43 miles but biked only 13.72 miles. Never thought something like that would happen!

PattStrap Review

I posted a review of the PattStrap on their site today (kept getting reminder emails from the vendor to do this). It's at http://pattstrap.com/pattstrap-counter-force-knee-strap-pri-28.html?reviews_id=107 but I'll reproduce it here in case they remove the reviews in the future:

PattStrap Knee Compression Strap
$18.50USD
by Andrien Wang
Date Added: Wednesday 06 February, 2008

I had IT-band trouble in my right knee/leg during marathon training (was up to about 19-20 mile runs when the "IT" hit the fan). Recovery has been slow (I'm back up to 7-8 miles now) but the PattStrap seems to have helped. I think it is a good product, but as another reviewer mentioned it sometimes curls up on the edges. Unlike that reviewer's experience, who had the problem after about 20 uses, mine has started this problem after only 5 runs. Maybe I just got a bad PattStrap. I'll try the other one (they come in a pair) and see if that one stays flat longer. I'm [also a little] disappointed that the "bulk-pack" option has been discontinued.

Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!]

UPDATE:

PattStrap Knee Compression Strap
$18.50USD
by Andrien Wang
Date Added: Saturday 09 February, 2008

Update to my last review (Wednesday, Feb 6). The last sentence is incorrect. I misread "10 Pair Bundle (Discounted)" as "Discontinued" - totally my fault! The PattStrap is still working great for me. I ran 16.5 miles this morning and will be doing the Cowtown (Fort Worth) Half Marathon on February 23 - something unfathomable just a few weeks ago.

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]

Update link: http://pattstrap.com/pattstrap-counter-force-knee-strap-pri-28.html?reviews_id=108

Double Indoor Tris

Was browsing through trifind.com and came across several "Lifetime Fitness Indoor Triathlon" events like this one: http://www.active.com/event_detail.cfm?event_id=1518936

I can't believe they charge for that. Don, Wilhe and I do this for free (and go longer!) at our own gym ... :-P

In fact, this week, I have done two "LA Fitness Tris".

On Tuesday, I started off with a 2.5 mile run, followed by a tough 45-minute spin class with Leslie, and then ended the workout with a 1,000-yard swim (500 yard splits: 10:27, 10:02.5)

Today, I did another indoor tri. This time, I started with a 60-minute spin class, followed by 2 miles on the treadmill, and another 1,000-yard swim (500 yard splits: 10:07.5, 9:40.5)

My running speed was not as fast as I would like (I was averaging around 10:00/mi for both days) and the swimming was a little tougher than expected, but nonetheless these were solid 90 and 100 minute workouts that pushed my aerobic threshold.

Tomorrow will be an off-day - I'm looking forward to it!

Team In Training Update

(Re)Commitment

Last week was a major milestone as I “recommitted” with my Teammates for the Lonestar Half-Ironman Triathlon (to be held in Galveston, TX on March 30, 2008). In addition to formally meeting the minimum fundraising threshold (thanks for your donations!), this also set into motion the registration for the race, travel arrangements, ordering of wetsuit (the Gulf of Mexico is still cold in March) and other logistics. It’s very exciting, yet a little scary at the same time.

A huge thank you to everyone that has donated — I can’t express how much I appreciate it. With your support, I am already two-thirds of the way to my fundraising goal ($1,700 out of $2,600) for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

If you would like to help, you can contribute to my fundraising account by making a donation via my online account at http://www.active.com/donate/tntntx/Andrien_Wang. Whatever you can contribute matters; however large or small, it all adds up. I greatly appreciate your help and look forward to hearing from you.

By the way, if you know of any friends, relatives or coworkers who would be interested in supporting me and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, feel free to direct them to this post. I welcome support from anyone who’d like help.

Until the next update …

-- Andy

=====

Quick Facts About Leukemia and Lymphoma

Sixty years ago, there were few effective treatments for children or adults with blood cancer and the survival rate was very low. Today, more than 85 percent of children with acute leukemia and more than 86 percent of patients with Hodgkin lymphoma are cured. Improved therapies have dramatically improved survival rates for most blood cancers, and even patients with diseases resistant to treatment, such as myeloma, are benefiting from new drugs that are increasing the rate and duration of remissions.

Yet more than three quarters of a million people in the United States currently have some form of blood cancer. Every 10 minutes someone dies from a blood cancer; an estimated 52,310 will die from one this year. LLS & TNT are a beacon of help and guidance to those touched by blood cancers.

DRC President's 10K

Slowly, but surely, my right knee (IT Band) is getting better. I ran the Dallas Running Club's "President's 10K" race this morning. I completed the 6.2 mile out-and-back course in 49:53 - didn't quite crack an 8:00 mile (my pace was 8:03/mi) but my time was still almost as fast as the last 10K I did back in December.

After completing the race, my knee was a little sore, but unlike after the Too Cold To Hold 15K, I finished strongly and could walk without major difficulty. So the running scorecard is currently:

- Jan 19: 15K (9.3 mi) run = pain
- Jan 26: 4.6 mi run + 4.6 mi walk = minor pain
- Feb 2: 10K (6.2 mi) run = minor pain

I got a Patt Strap earlier this week and wore it for the race. It seemed to have help since it probably lessened the rubbing of the IT Band against my knee. Hopefully, between its use and my reduced running mileage, complete recovery is just around the corner.