Free Swimming Workouts

Before I introduce this - I want to confirm that I am not one to give any advice on swimming besides the fact that one should practice, practice, practice.  I was not born to be a fish, nor will I advocate proper swimming technique as I have never had one-on-one professional help, however have gained lots of quality education from the competitive swimmers apart of the University of Ottawa Triathlon Club.  Without them, I would have been swimming countless hours of freestyle without implementing drill work.  Thanks to all of you!

If you are like me, you show up to the pool and decide your workout right there on the spot.  You might not even have an idea on how to structure a swim workout.  Don't worry, everyone has to start somewhere (even me).  So, I bring to you my finding of the day: 100 Free Swimming Workouts.

This website is super easy to navigate and takes no time to find a workout suited to your needs.  The workouts are categorized into 5 groups: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, One Mile, and Open Water Preparation.  Furthermore, each workout is described by its primary goal and the total amount of yards are given in the last column.  Head on over to the website to find out more.  It takes the guesswork out of swim training - for free.

100 Swimming Workouts

Santa's Bag of Triathlete Goodies

So Christmas has passed and Santa was good to me for sure.  My Christmas pretty much encompassed the sport that has become my second life.  Below is all the present's my many Santa's got me :)

Timex Global Race Trainer Watch

This watch is amazing considering all the features it has.  My major concern for 2013 was pacing and this watch will make sure I stay on it with its built in GPS.  Furthermore, it can be used during each leg of a triathlon as it is water resistant and has a multisport feature that is more than ideal.  This feature allows me to setup up a desired brick workout, and easily transition from one different page on the watch display to the next sport.  I cannot wait for the snow to melt so I can take this bad boy outside.

Synergy Endorphin Wetsuit

Somehow Santa knows my size exactly because on Christmas morning I tried this on and it fit like a glove.  Unfortunately I cannot tell you exactly how great this product is, however I can tell you that it 'forces' your body into a proper alignment for the freestyle stroke.  On the tag/warranty card it stated that this suit may not feel right vertically as it is meant for horizontal positioning... interesting feature.

Aqua Sphere Kaiman Goggles

I was suffering from irritation and rubbing around my eye sockets from my previous Speedo swim goggles so Santa decided to hook me up with some new ones.  Lets put it like this, Aqua Sphere knows exactly what they are doing when they design goggles.  They have absolutely no plastic pieces near or around your eye socket - just rubber.  Not only does these goggles give you more peripheral vision, they are so comfy I could wear them everyday.  I would classify these guys as the Audi of the swim goggle market.

4 GB Waterproof MP3 player

Last, but not least, is my brand new companion for solo swim workouts.  I do not enjoy my swim training and I find myself looking at the clock more and more hoping that I can get out of the pool sooner rather than later.  My new toy from Santa is this little Chinese Gem (as that is where they come from - no manufacturers name on the box) that will keep me focused the whole way through my swims.  The countless laps will breeze by with this mp3 player that came with waterproof earbuds with interchangeable earbuds so you can get a secure fit.  Furthermore, you can even strap this mp3 player to your goggle strap and it will not go anywhere.

The Suffering has Begun

The winter is approaching and I will confess - I am not a die hard outdoors-man.  As soon as the temperature dips into the single digits, I seem to find myself training inside more and more.  It is due to combination of the frigid temperatures and the quality of workout.  Personally, I find I am capable of greater workouts inside from late fall to early spring.  I do not think the people who run outside when it is cold are crazy - it just does not pick my fancy.  Rather feel my fingers and toes constantly…

ANYWAYS… So now that I have become a hermit for the season, I needed new ways to stay motivated inside during the countless hours of training.  This is my first season of owning an indoor bike trainer (my beloved Cycle Ops Super Magneto Pro) and so I have gained the opportunity to consistently train on my bike.  Furthermore, it has given me many more opportunities to train since I do not need travel.  Bonus!

My indoor cycling has been accompanied by the amazingly cheap workout software TrainerRoads.  It has been my training buddy and my support.  TrainerRoad’s premade workouts have been having me push my boundaries time and time again, and breaks up the monotony of just ‘spinning’ my legs for extended periods of time.

Not only does TrainerRoads have hundreds of structured workouts to choose from, they have created workouts to coincide with video workouts.  Primarily, TrainerRoads have integrated The Sufferfest – a compellation of workout videos utilizing real footage of international cycling races.  The name of series explains the torture you endure.

“At Sufferfest Studios, we make the hardest, most exciting, most get-on-your-bike-and-suffer-your-ass-off cycling training videos in the world. And we strive to deliver the best customer service in the industry. The Sufferlandrian community deserves nothing less.”

Trust me, they do just that.  I have obtained the series of videos and let me tell you, they will make the strongest of riders quiver.  I have even questioned my efforts during previous workouts - like as if I may not have been trying hard before.  The seamless integration into TrainerRoads allows riders to have target powers to attain for the variety of intervals.  Furthermore, the on screen prompts during the video make you dig deeper.  The official race footage that Sufferfest Studios uses for all their videos make the experience far more realistic than any other workout I have done. 

I recommend you check out TheSufferfest series – your workouts will never be the same again.  They are the definition of suffer. Their slogan says it all: 

"I will beat my ass today to kick yours tomorrow."

Here are links to my first two Sufferfest Sessions, and the will not be my last!

Revolver

Angels

Review: TrainerRoad; indoor cycling software

It’s raining outside and you had planned to venture out for a long bike ride, one’s first instinct (rather mine) would be scrap the workout and try tomorrow.  My first answer to combat this dilemma was to purchase a bike trainer.  I did just that - foraging  through Ebay, Craiglist, and multiple local online classifieds to obtain the perfect indoor trainer in my price range.  The CycleOps Super Magneto Pro became my new way of combatting my missed workouts since living in Canada comes with such haphazard weather patterns.

After about 4 weeks of using my indoor bike trainer on rainy days, it became a chore.  I dreaded spending even 30 minutes starring into the abyss or watching a movie for the 3^rd time while I pedaled aimlessly.  After reading up on ways to battle this indoor hypnosis, I stumbled across TrainerRoad, a piece of software that has made indoor bike training my main routine!

TrainerRoad, designed and created by Nate Pearson and Reid Weber, has much to offer to the cycling and triathlon community on a budget (pretty much all of us!).  Upon opening their website, they demonstrate how easy it is to setup and use with a 3 step process.  Provided you have a laptop, an ANT+ USB stick, and an ANT+ product such as a heart rate monitor, speed/cadence sensor, or power meter, you are ready to rock and roll.  Additionally, there are three ways to workout with their assortment of over 300 pre-designed workouts which are categorized on their website based on duration, intensity, interval duration, training zones and type.  The three ways TrainerRoad’s workouts can be customized to your physical ability is through heart rate, a power meter, or their patented Virtual Power.  Since the workouts are designed based on percentage of Functional Training Power (FTP), each workout is unique to the user and will cause sufficient physiological stress to meet the goals of the workout.  Your FTP will be measured whenever your conduct the 8 minute or 20 minute FTP test workout in conjunction to your lactate threshold heart rate.  This is such an impressive feature alone – but wait – there’s more!

If you do not have the money to dish out for power meter, which can cost upwards of $3000 for top of the line, you can invest in a $35 Garmin speed/cadence sensor to compliment your ANT+ USB stick and use their patented Virtual Power.  They have designed power curves specific to the trainer you use that calculates power based off of data obtained from the speed/cadence sensor.  Although I do not own a power meter and cannot say how accurate it is, I can however say that it will serve as a means of monitoring progression during the winter months even if it can’t dish out your actual power.  All this for such an affordable price...

So now I have a measurement of power to work off of during the winter months and rainy days – AWESOME!  But what about the boredom associated with riding inside?  Well, if you are not busy watching what the workout has you doing (IE: intervals, hill repeats, low cadence, sprints, etc), you can load up a video in the background and have the software overlay a small portion at the bottom of the screen.  If you are watching a widescreen movie, you do not miss a piece of the action at all!

After you finish your workout, all your data is nicely organized on their website for future review. Additionally, you get awarded badges as your progress in your riding potential.  Not only can you track your progress, whenever your workout pushes you past previous bests, you get rewarded with a virtual badge!  Below is a screenshot of your Career page and how it monitors your workouts.

The Career page of your TrainerRoad account

Not impressed yet?  You can also review a workout right after and look at all the data recorded or uploaded it to a 3^rd party software such as TrainingPeaks.  The post workout data is a graphical representation of your workout including power and heart rates.  Additionally, tabs at the bottom open up different tables outlining your various training zones based on heart rate, power, and your bests performances during the workout. Also, if you mouse over an interval, it is highlighted in the graph as demonstrated in the screen shot below.

Workout report for my most recent ride - Gemeni.

This review is not even close to encapsulating the feature rich TrainerRoad and where it plans on going.  There are workout plans ranging from novice to advance riders which will leave the guesswork out of choosing what workout to do (which is a problem I have run into many times).  You can check out other users and previous rides they have done on the website.  They have worked hard with TheSufferfest.com and have implemented video workouts, a feature I have yet to try but wish to in the near future.  Just pop in the video and prepare to enter the Pain Cave. There is an active Support and Feedback section on the website where people can propose new ideas and others vote whether they would like it or not. 

Future features include a Workout Creator which should be released soon.  This would allow users to create their own workouts or edit previously existing workouts to their liking.  Furthermore, there have been talks of multiplayer support in the Feedback section and that would be such an amazing feature that would set this software in line with Tacx Virtual Reality Trainer but at a fraction of the price, a very small fraction.

The reason I have neglected to say the price of this software is because it almost feels like highway robbery.  For $10 a month, you get all the features I briefly outlined and so much more.  If you do the math, it would take 5 years of using TrainerRoad to buy the cheapest power meter on the market, but you wouldn’t have such amazing software to combine with indoor riding. Did I mention it is $10 a month?

TrainerRoad is the best cycling software by far and will continue to raise the bar for any software that wishes to take it on.  It may have been an idea just a few years ago, but it has grown into a stable and powerful software that will make any cyclist improve in no time.  Thank you Nate and Reid for creating this strong training tool that has become a vital asset to my training.  No more missed workouts!

For more information on TrainerRoad, please visit their website by clicking here.  Trust me, for $10 a month, you cannot go wrong.

Ali'i Drive: Strength

What does it take to be an Ironman?  What does it take to be competing in Ironman World Championships this year in Kona?  Will power? Determination? Perseverance?

This segment from Ali'i Drive provided by Ironman showcases interviews with some of the biggest names in the long distance triathlon world including Craig Alexander and Andy Potts and what they define as strength.  I have watched it over 5 times since it was released, and it still makes me want to go out and train harder. How do you define strength? I agree with Craig Alexander, its all mental - in more ways than one.

Army Run 2012 Recap

It was another successful year for the Ottawa Army Run 2012 with over 8500 participants tackling the Half Marathon.  The race started at 9 am the starting line was littered with runners of varying capacity.  The start of the race was initiated by the firing of massive cannon that let off a noise that could even be heard by the deaf.  The participants flooded out of the starting gates to embark on 21.1 kilometers of endurance, strength, and will power.

There are two reasons why I take part in this race.  For starters, I love the cause and the atmosphere.  I take part in it yearly now to demonstrate my admiration for our Canadian soldiers who risk their lives every day for us.  My second reason is because I love the course itself.  It is challenging with multiple rolling hills, a minor venture through Rockliffe Parkway, and you finish along one of the longest skating rinks in the world; the historic Rideau Canal.

This year, I planned on analyzing my race through recording my time per kilometer and my heart rate consistently.  Unfortunately, at the start of the race, my heart rate monitor slipped down my chest and to my abdomen where it became useless.  Unfortunate… but life goes on and I decided to maintain my decision to monitor my time per kilometer throughout the 21.1km run.  Below is a graph of my pace per kilometer which I recorded in a rudimentary fashion.  Each kilometer was recorded as a lap, therefore there should be 21 laps in total (the last lap was actually 1.1km since I passed the finish line).  Additionally, I did not see the 1 km and 8 km marker so I divided the entire 2 km lab by obtain an average pace for each distance.

As one can see, I started out too fast and burnt myself out for the remainder of the run.  I was fatiguing at a pace of about 3% per kilometer throughout the run.  Furthermore, the first 3 km were ran into a headwind which did not help my case much either.  Not only was I running to fast, I was pushing myself into a strong headwind.  Two things of which indicate imminent doom in the endurance running world.

Slowest Kilometer                          04:22

Fastest Kilometer                          03:35

Average Pace                                04:03

Furthermore, my fastest pace was during the initial 2 kilometer, and it may have been faster than that during the first kilometer as I did not happen to see the 1km marker and this pace is an average over the first 2km.  My average pace is quite nice at 4:03, about an 11 second decrease from last year.  Although this is an improvement, I wished for more but many factors influenced this including my many races, and an existent injury which impeded on my training. 

What can I learn from the data I have obtained from the run? I need to slow down at the start so that my fatigue rate is as close to zero as possible throughout the entire run.  I need to hold back and settle into a nice pace which I can maintain.  Unfortunately I have yet to do that in a race from what I can tell.  I did manage to come 61^st overall out of 8701 runners as reported by Sportstats.com so I should at least be excited for accomplishing that.   Furthermore, I completed this run with a nagging injury to my lower left leg which I believe is muscle strain to my flexor digitorum longus... one of the muscles which are involved in ankle inversion.

How much do you eat?

In a recent article published on Competitor.com, Professional triathlete Jesse Thomas, CEO of Picky Bars, shares a summary of his food journal he kept over 7 days.  Here are some of the numbers he showcased:

Total Training Hours for the week: 26 hours
Average Daily Caloric Intake: 5 900 cal
Smallest Intake: 5 400 cal
Biggest intake: 6 500 cal

What shocked me the most initially was the amount of energy he was consuming on average. I figured that he must be gaining weight because those numbers are considerably high.  I did some math to see if he would be theoretically in a positive energy balance and this is what I came up with.  (Remember these are just estimates and not direct calculations) :

Resting Metabolic Rate: ~ 2000 cals*
- The equation used for calculating the Resting Metabolic Rate is defined here.

Energy intake required for week: ~14 000 cals
 - energy required to maintain basic metabolic functions and weight if he all sat around the house all day

Total weekly energy intake: 41 400 cals

Excess energy: 27 400 cals

Energy consumed in training: 25 400 - 31 700 cals
- This calculation is based on his average oxygen consumption during training is 60-75% of his estimated VO2max (67ml/kg/min).  Unfortunately, without knowing his true maximal oxygen consumption, nor his training intensities throughout the week, this value is an average of professional triathletes.  However, it is not unlikely to see an athlete of his size expend 1000-1200 calories per hour at moderate intensities.

Energy balance at end of week:  -2000 cals to 4300 cals
- Red denotes negative energy balance while green denotes positive energy balance.  

As one can see through the math done, his energy intake should account for his energy consumption.  This is crucial for endurance athletes as any tip of the scale in either direction can be costly.  Unplanned weight gain can slow you down while weight loss may cause you to loose muscle mass.

The most shocking part of these findings is that if he was not consuming the excess energy through physical activity, he would have gained almost 8 lbs of weight during that week alone!

This would be an interesting project for myself to undertake for one week during base training of the winter.  I would love to crunch the numbers and see if my intake is matching my consumption...