Catching up!

Three weeks without a substantive blog post. Not good. Not enough accountability. You won’t be surprised to learn it’s because I had a couple of bad weeks in there. No real doubt inserted into my plan, but still not good.

Progress, March 31–April 20

As I write this (April 21) there are 146 days, almost 21 weeks to Barrelman. My Chronic Training Load (TrainingPeaks’ single-number estimate of my fitness) is 14% higher than three weeks ago, 150% higher than at New Year’s. Logged 20 workouts. Covered 49.95 miles (80.39 km, 72% of that virtual). TrainingPeaks gave me a Training Stress Score of 558 (including my heaviest week in what I think is 6½ years) and identified 16 Peak Performances. And I had my longest run (even it it was really a walk/run) in 11 months.

But I also had a bout of non-compliance: 7 red cards and 3 orange. Most of this non-compliance was from my mysterious periods of low energy; I’ve posted a separate blog post about these periods of low energy here; I’d be delighted if someone could read it and tell me what the solution is. 🙂

Long run

A friend says I shouldn’t put “run” in quotes as I’m wont to do. In my defence I will say that I’m really doing a cycle of 2 minutes jogging and 3 briskly walking. My jogging is getting faster. After the Sun Run I’ll work on (amongst many other things!) getting more jogging into the cycle. I expect I will do Barrelman with a lot of programmed walking.

Having said all that, I had my longest, er, run since last year’s Sun Run on April 13. To be frank I was scared, apprehensive. I procrastinated. But I did it. The first, oh, 1½ miles I felt every niggle, every step, and I wondered if I could do it or if I would just turn around and walk slowly home with my metaphorical tail between my legs.

Next thing: I was at 2¾ miles, more than halfway, and I knew, just knew, that the 2/3 cycle would take me all the way home, even on the steep grade out of the East Don River’s ravine, one of the glacial spillways that add spice to running and cycling in Toronto. The funny thing was how the mile and a bit in between just disappeared.

Anyway, now 100% confident about the Sun Run.

Next week!

Zoya and me in 2018 and 2024

On Sunday, Zoya and I are going to run the Vancouver Sun Run. In 2018 and ’24 Zoya and I ran the Mini Sun Run (2.5 km) together and then I did the 10K. This year we’ll both run the 10K. Her mom is talking about giving Zoya escapes every 2.5 km (presumably on mom’s e-bike); my big concern is that she’ll go out ’way too fast, so my strategy is to ask her to stick with me as boring as it will seem—she should easily be able to last 10K on a run 2/walk 3 cycle.

Having said all that—I know she hasn’t been training; we’ll just depend on her (quite high) fitness from all the other things she does. On Friday, when I arrive in town I’ll ask her if she’s still committed. She is so active, so focused (right now on circus school) that I will put zero pressure on her. But if she doesn’t want to do the Sun Run I won’t do it either. I said last year I wouldn’t do it again unless Zoya did it with me. And it’s not like all this fitness will go to waste. 🙂

Still indoors

View from my trainer

Still biking indoors. Like most working triathletes I expect my workweek rides to be on the trainer. Now into mid-May you’d expect my weekend rides to be outside. But it hasn’t happened yet; combination of bad weather on Saturdays, the period of low energy I’ve written about, and a sharp but thankfully short period of depression. I’m now splitting my indoor rides among no fewer than four virtual apps: TrainingPeaks Virtual, Zwift, FulGaz, and Rouvy (as above). Targeting May 10 for my return to the road with my forever bike.

Dailyish walks

I’ve taken to going out for a short walk dailyish. I’m blessed to live next to a glacial ravine with a paved path. For 20 or so minutes I can do a medium-pace walk of not quite a mile and feel somehow blissed out. A couple of days ago one of my cats, Tip (short for Tiptree), came out with me, and I let him set both the pace and the route. It was kind of fun. Here’s my Facebook post on it, complete with weird GPS trace.

Week minus-25 done

Apparently Minus 25 is a musician.

TL;DR

• Another week down
• Listen to your coach
• Tired
• No back-up plan
• Some good news in my non-athletic life
• Next week: no fun

Another week down

As I write this (March 23) there are 175 days, exactly 25 weeks to Barrelman. My Chronic Training Load (TrainingPeaks’ single-number estimate of my fitness) is 18% higher than last week, 82% higher than at New Year’s. Logged 7 workouts on 5 days for 4 h 17′. Covered 27.4 miles (most of that virtual). TrainingPeaks gave me a Training Stress Score of 215 and identified 20 Peak Performances.

Listen to your coach

Bit of a story here, but let me be clear: it didn’t work out. Coach Mary had set Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday as:

• Tu: easy run/walk 40′
• W: intervals on the bike trainer
• Th: easy run/walk 30′
• F: off

Tuesday was a stressful day. I had a proposal due that day to a prospective client; while everything was under control I was still metaphorically biting my nails until it went in. The weather was spectacular for mid-March in Toronto, so an easy run/walk outside would’ve been wonderful. But those intervals called to me: I wanted something genuinely but quickly hard, where I’d get sweaty and beat up and feel I’d done something. So, without consulting Coach, I altered the order:

• Tu: intervals on the bike trainer
• W: easy run/walk 40’
• Th: off
• F: easy run/walk 30’

The bike intervals on Tuesday went great. As usual these days when I’m doing bike intervals I used TrainingPeaks’ newish training platform. Ok, so far so good, right?

Wednesday’s run was meh. Good things: ran outside in shorts and short sleeves!

But I had no energy. My ærobic fitness was fine, but my legs had nothing.

And then, on Friday, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do the run I’d rescheduled to the day, so I ended up doing brisk walks to/from the local strip mall where I had some things to do.

Bottom line: I was not able to execute the plan, and therefore I didn’t get all the training benefit I could’ve; I didn’t “surrender to the plan”. Basically one run/walk didn’t get enough energy, and one didn’t happen.

Tired

• Did my “long ride” (on the trainer, using Rouvy to ride in Taiwan; TBH kind of boring)
• Went to a pizza place in the Cliffside neighbourhood
• Went to a folk music concert in a church
• Ended up going to bed very late
• And getting up early
• Ran 18 laps (I think) on the 200m track at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre
  • Too tired/low on energy to do the full 24 laps Mary wanted
• Got pushed hard by Arden in the gym
• Almost fell asleep in the car on the way home

I’d forgotten what heavy-training tiredness tastes like. There’s an added piquancy being older. I kind of like it, to be honest, though it makes getting anything done on Sunday tough.

Vagueness can be good

Stock pic of a management consultant. If he’s drinking with his right hand why is the saucer on his left?

For years I’ve chafed under my old job title, Senior Transit Technology Specialist. So much of my work doesn’t remotely fit under that heading. As of April 1 I’ll be a Senior Management Consultant II—basically I can do almost anything under that title. This comes is a move up a grade in the firm’s system, and a modest raise. After a rough year it’s nice to get some good news.

No back-up plan

If toward August my coach and I decided I wasn’t ready for a half-Ironman, my back-up was Ironman 70.3 Florida in mid-December. The current American administration’s attitude to Canada and Canadians has pushed that right off the table. So we now have no back-up plan.

Next week: no fun

Colonoscopy Wednesday. This is my seventh or eighth (who counts them?). My mother died at age 54 of colon cancer that had spread, so every five years or so I have a routine scope; nothing’s ever been found, so it continues routine. The scope itself I find uneventful; it’s the prep that I hate. Monday and especially Tuesday will suck, and of course blow a hole in my training.

I do have a goal, though: to ride outside on Saturday. Sick of the trainer. I have my “forever bike” to get some miles on.

A week out west

TL;DR

• Spent the week in Vancouver
• First run outside this year!
• Sun Run with Zoya!

Grandkids, oh, and their parents, too

Granddaughters cuddling with me

Spent most of the week in East Vancouver visiting my daughter and her family. Nothing to do with the journey this blog is about, but being a dad and a grandpa is the most rewarding aspect of my life. Liz and Parnian are the happiest couple and best parents I’ve known; I’m so grateful that they’re an integral part of my life.

2025’s first run out of doors

All my runs this calendar year have been on the treadmill—until this week. The weather was mild and—much more important—there was no ice. Did most of the run along the Central Valley Greenway, which parallels the BNSF Railway’s Grandview Cut. So nice to run in shorts and a short-sleeved T shirt, albeit with a vest.

Sun Run with Zoya!

The Vancouver Sun Run is Canada’s largest running events; Wikipedia lists it 16th worldwide. IIRC 43,000 folks did it last year; I estimated it as 2% of Metro Vancouver’s adult population. I did it last year and said I’d not do it again—unless my then–nine-year-old granddaughter Zoya said she’d do it with me. 10K’s aren’t my thing, and it was just too big; some of my colleagues on our corporate team were texting in Teams that they’d done the race and I was half an hour from starting.

Anyway, on my trip this week Zoya said she wanted to do this year’s with me, which changes things. We did our first “training run” together, a few laps of the very safe loop around Grandview Elementary School, near where she lives. (Not posting the actual trace of the run, to protect her privacy.) I’m hopeful that she’ll be able to do the loop a few times twice a week. I’m not really worried about her finishing 10 km if she takes it at a good pace (tho’ her parents are dubioius); it’s keeping to a “good pace”! Like every tween she wants to go!

Next week (Mar. 3-9)

An athletically quiet week, but catching up on various support appointments.

• Seeing my chiropodist: hope to get some good news about my recovery from December’s toenail removal. It’s been frustratingly slow, but it does seem to be getting better—which would see swimming next week!
• Going to tax my physiotherapist to treat me like an “athlete”, not just an old fat guy: what do I need to dailyish to be “quick, light, smooth, relaxed” (the old Dead Runner mantra).
• Having my monthly chat with a nutritionist. How can I deal with my weird food sensitivities, weird “emptiness”, eat enough to train, but not get any heavier?
• And chatting with my mental-conditioning coach; hope to post some results of that chat in my next post.

My “A” goal for 2025

Like a lot of would-be triathletes, this is my season of planning. Your coach asks (or you ask yourself), “What are your goals next year?” Many of us write down a list of races, ascribe to each of them a grade (A, B, C). One or two will be “A” goals. And your coach, or you yourself, will build a training plan to hit your goals, particularly the A’s. To be clear (indeed, as I’ll make clearer later) this is a great idea: it gives a shape and a point to what you do with your training time.

But I have a lot of problems with goals, especially outcome goals. I sign up for an Ironman and then halfway through the training year realize (or think) it’s out of reach, become demoralized, and then don’t persist in my training.

I was intrigued by something Patrick Delorenzi says in one of his videos about Ironman training: that he trained toward an Ironman, but didn’t register until he was close to ready. This directionality appealed to me.

“Directional” goals for 2025

For two years I’ve been working with Kimberlee Bow on my consistency and self-, well, actualization. We discussed goal-setting a lot. Early on I came to realize (duh) that process goals were more useful than outcome goals; and toward the middle of this year (2024) I came up with the idea of having directional goals. Through November and December as I worked on thinking through “what I wanted to do in 2025” I came up with three.

Before I discuss them, let me say that directional goals are not timebound, so they aren’t classic SMART goals; rather they’re decisionmaking tools, i.e., you ask, Does this activity take me in the direction I want to go?

So my directional goals:

• Be fit enough to do a half-Ironman in 8½ hours. When I formulated this I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able actually to do a half-Ironman under the cutoff. What was important was that I’d strive in that direction, and that my workout plan would take me in that direction.
• Get back to running. I started running 40 years ago, in early middle age. I love running, however slow I do it. A bunch of injuries, a loss of fitness (a lot of that, of course, age-related) and now I don’t run. I have no pace goal: let’s get me back to an easy jog, programmed walk breaks are ok, and see what we can do with that.
• Improve my body composition. I know this is a euphemism, but it’s a useful one. I don’t want to focus on weight; I want to focus on eating about the right amount of the right stuff, and doing things that improve my strength. I’m a mesomorph, kind of chunky even when I was at a good weight, and that’s ok; but let’s try to make the rest of my seventies and (fate willing) my eighties easier on my joints and tendons. (I have a plan, which I’ll post about later.)

Ta da! The “A” goal!

For the first half of December I had an elaborate “goals and intentions” documents, tons of overthinking. Lots of would-like-to-do races. Lots of timebound things. But I kept coming back to my birthday: Friday, September 26, 2025. I’ll be 72 years old. What could I do that would be 72-ish, challenging but feasible, but wouldn’t put me under so much pressure I’d give up hope in July?

Answer: to do a 72-mile self-triathlon on my 72nd birthday:

• No time limit, but has to be done more or less without stopping;
• Legs are more or less in Ironman proportions, but no leg is shorter than in a half-Ironman

(A “self-triathlon” is my term for a swim-bike-run workout.)

Lots of logistics and decisions to be made, but I’m telling my overthinking brain to let it go, and make decisions closer to when I need to.

Going forward

I’m hoping this is the first of a series of weekly blog posts where I discuss my progress toward that “A” goal.

Today, as I write (Saturday, December 21, 2024, 40 weeks less a day to The Big Day) I’m off my feet because I had a toenail permanently removed on Thursday. The enforced rest is a nice period to what’s come before, and a mental and physical launch pad for what’s to come.