Guess who...

... has emails from Chrissie Wellington, Macca, Eneko Llanos, Andy Potts, Normann Stadler, Luke Bell, Gina Ferguson, Chris Lieto, Gina Kehr, Dede Griesbauer, Eduardo Sturla, Jo Lawn, Mathias Hecht, Leanda Cave, Marino Vanhoenacker, Michael Lovato, and Ronnie Schildknecht in her inbox.

Yeah, that would be me!

I feel so cool...

Alright, I'll explain myself. To reproduce a photo on the internet you need permission from its rightful owner. So I've had to write to all the athletes who may be contenders in Kona and ask whether I can use a photo. Sometimes I get a response from a PR person. Sometimes I hear from the athlete themselves. Surprisingly, some of the most successful people reply to their own emails.
I heard from Chrissie Wellington's manager, Macca's publicist, Eneko Llanos in person, Andy Pott's manager, Normann Stadler himself, Luke Bell himself, Gina Ferguson wrote a very nice personal email, Chris Lieto himself, Gina Kehr's manager, Dede Griesbauer herself, Eduardo Sturla's wife, Jo Lawn herself, Mathias Hecht's publicist (they sent me an invitation to a press briefing in Kona), Leanda Cave AND her publicist, Marino Vanhoenacker himself, Michael Lovato himself, and Ronnie Schildknecht in person. So there.

The scariest part? Chrissie Wellington, Macca, Andy Potts, Normann Stadler, Gina Ferguson, Gina Kehr, Dede Griesbauer, Eduardo Sturla, and Mathias Hecht all asked to reproduce whatever I write on their site. Yeah, I know... they get bonuses for media exposure from their sponsors. But these people want to know what I think of them! Holy shit! It's time to learn how to filter what I say!

Humble pie and other life lessons

First off, I want to thank everybody for their input on my coaching situation. I must have devoted ten to fifteen hours consulting with friends, other coaches, and my own training logs. Finally, I made an appointment to talk to him and we had a looooooong conversation in which I voiced my concerns. I explained exactly what I would like to do differently and why. Then we discussed the pro's and con's of his way versus my way. After about an hour of this, we were wrapping things up and he said something like this:

"Your goal is to have a good race. Every athlete I've ever spoken to has had the same story, 'I took it easy in the first half, and I couldn't believe how many people I passed in the last hour.' Last year I had an athlete tell me that he felt like he executed his race perfectly. He felt like he could have gone ten minutes faster, but he finished knowing that he had raced strong the whole way through."

BANG! It hit me.

"Wait, what do you think that I think that a 'good race' is?" I asked. In our initial conversation about goals I had told him that this was an 'unfinished business race,' and that I wanted to have a 'good experience' before I said goodbye to triathlon for good. It occurred to me that maybe I should have been more specific. "I don't want to walk away from this race wondering how well I could have done. I don't want to be smiling in my finishing photo or walking comfortably the next day. My idea of a 'good' race is performing well right up until the finish line and then going right to the medical tent because I left it all out on the course." Don't get me wrong, I don't want to wind up in the medical tent at mile 23, but I'm not really one to revel in the accomplishment of "just finishing."

"Oh." He didn't say so, but I think that changed everything. "Well not everything," he corrected me. "Just the way we'll be practicing making decisions." Now my program involves a lot more hard work, a lot more hours, and a hell of a lot more running. For the first time since starting this build-up, my legs are satisfactorily trashed.

Part of this whole "growing up" thing is figuring out when I'm wrong, and then admitting to it. I was right in that he was training me to be slow, but I'm also finding that I've been wrong about what my body can handle, too. If there's one nugget of knowledge to be gained from this whole experience, it's that even Claires need rest.

Every endurance book ever reminds us not to commit the sin of "going too hard on your easy days and going too easy on your hard days." I didn't think that I was guilty of this, I thought that I just wasn't all that great at short bursts of speed. But now that I have somebody else looking at subjective feedback, I'm seeing that I crap out on the hard days when I've mucked it up by spicing up the easy days.

The other golden rule of sport is to "rest as hard as your train, because it is during recovery that you get stronger." Yeah, yeah, I know that. Everybody knows that. But I've always looked to extreme ultraendurance athletes and figured, if resting should be a quarter of your pie, then bake a bigger pie so that the volume of your rest slice can be higher. And I've gotten pretty good at that. But just because you beat your body into submission so that it can pull out a marathon PR the day after a half marathon PR, doesn't mean that that marathon was the best you had in you. I'm trying to learn to be patient. Trying.

Since I started working with a coach, my crappy days have been phenominally crappy. Last week I went for a ride with the big boys where my legs were loading up after only about 10 seconds, I was struggling to hold a 20mph average in a pack, and I even got dropped on the downhills. "What the hell have they done with my Claire?" asked a Straight Man Over 40 who I call Meat Wad. But when I'm on, I'm on fire! A 42-minute 10K, a century that was a hair over 5 hours (and had those who rode with me last year, including Meat Wad picking their jaws up off the ground), and a 15-minute 1000 yard time trial.

My job now is to just trust and hope that it will all come together so that November 29 is an "on" day. I've been doing paper triathlons, and inflating my goals to about 1,000 psi. I'm trying my best to remember that dreams are one thing, but that goals are reached by a million tiny decisions. Right now all I can do is focus on not fucking up those tiny decisions (i.e. resisting the urge to pull a marathon out of my ass just to prove to myself that I still can). In the end, I'm glad I have the help, even if it is putting me in the poorhouse.

(Photo credits: Sly in the Morning, EldarKinSlayer, © Martindata | Dreamstime.com, Active Running

Where the hell did THAT come from?!?!

I really, really need your guys' input.

I've been really dissatisfied with my coach. I have many grievances, but these are the big ones:

1. He is training me to be slow. I understand that a triathlon is a swimbikerun (as Rocketpants put it), not a swim, and a bike, and a run. But this guy wants me to do the swim and the bike so slow that I would have to have the run of my life to significantly beat my time from last year. The swim "Ironman pace" he has chosen for me is so slow that I have to interrupt my stroke to go slow enough to make it.
   
2. I feel like he's not listening to me. This ties into point 1, but it also has to do with conversations we've had where I've said, "In the past I've seen improvement by doing XYZ, not ABC." And he says there will be more XYZ in my program, but when I check my schedule, it's all ABC. He says one thing is tiring me out, and that's why I had a bad next workout; but all I keep thinking is a 45-minute swim/2-hour easy bike has never tired me out before. I didn't feel tired.
   
3. I am so very bored! I knew that I liked being my own guinea pig, but I never thought that training would be so bland without it. I find myself dreading most of my workouts now that I can see them coming from a mile away. I hate training these days. The only workouts that have been fun are the ones I wasn't supposed to do.
   
4. I just can't afford it. I thought I could when I hired him, but something seems to come up every month. The cat gets tapeworm, the car needs an oil change, I need a new cassette... I just don't seem to have the financial flexibility to pay for it on my unemployment checks.
5. I've felt like I'm getting weaker. I haven't felt so aerobically out of shape since I quit drinking and smoking. It's hard to pinpoint, especially since he won't let me use bike speed as evidence of lost fitness, but I can feel when I'm having a bad day. I've been having a lot of bad days since I hired him.
   

So I was all ready to fire the guy. About a week ago I started looking at my training plan as more of a suggestion and throwing half my workouts out the window. I stopped following his pacing suggestions, and started going faster. I rode a hard, hilly century on a day when I was supposed to do an easy 3 hour ride. I replaced two rides with runs. Then, I moved this week's key workout up to when it fit better in my schedule. So rather than taking an easy day followed by a rest day leading up to this workout, I just plunked it the day after a tough trail run (and two days after a relatively intense brick). The workout was a 90 minute easy ride followed by a 10K running time trial.

I ran a fucking 41:58 for a 10K! This isn't just fast for me, we're talking is my Garmin broken? fast. I almost shit myself a month ago when I ran a 48.5-minute 10K. So where the hell did those extra SIX MINUTES come from? (I uploaded the data, and it seems sound).

Last month's 10K: about 65º and sunny
This month's 10K: about 60º and cloudy/windy

Last month's 10K: on a flat to rolling course following a day off
This month's 10K: on the track as part of a brick, following a 90-minute ride

Mile 1: 7:24; 6:42
Mile 1.5: feel like I'm going to shit myself; feel alright
Mile 2: 7:37; 6:13
Mile 2.5: get a stabbing pain in my right kidney; get a stabbing pain in my left kidney
Mile 3: 7:53; 6:34
Mile 3.5: hit the wall and consider ditching the workout; slow down a bit as a preventative measure, poop feeling goes away
Mile 4: 8:00; 6:59
Mile 4.5: start playing mental games; begin to feel like my legs are drained and wonder how long I can keep it up
Mile 5: 8:08; 7:04
Mile 5.5: just aim to get through it; start feeling a bit nauseous but figure I have less than a mile to go
Mile 6: 8:02; 6:50
Mile 6.2: finish in 48:35, av. 7:50; feel like I'm going to throw up; finish in 41:58, av. 6:46; am convinced I am going to throw up. Somehow I don't

There are some things that might have contributed:

• I take these pills called Optygen. They're fucking gold, I tell you. I kind of felt that they made me stronger, but I'd never been off them for more than a few days at a time until two months ago, when I ran out and couldn't replace them. This could have something to do with why I felt so weak, and why I feel stronger now that I'm back on them. (They're legal, by the way, and recently coronated as "the official supplement of Ironman"). However, I was still on them when I did the last 10K time trial in 48:35.
• My nutrition has kind of sucked lately, and I've only been back on the ice-cream-free wagon for a week or two. But I've eaten well in the past and never run a sub-seven minute mile, let alone 6.2 of them.
• Is it the coach and the low volume, or is it that I've finally ignored his advice and gone with my own instinct that I'm better slightly tired than I am fresh? I'm sure that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
• Could it be that my Garmin really was shitting itself? I mean, I was running on a track, and it seemed pretty consistent with the distance per lap... but there also were train tracks next to the field that could have fucked with the satelite signal...
• After about 2 months of running in 90-degree temperatures and stifling humidity, it's finally cool again. Finally I can cut loose again.
• I only started running again about 6 weeks ago, and before that I'd done significantly different training than my usual triathlon training program. Meaning that my 10K last month was on almost no run training in over 6 months. Maybe this time was already coming? Has cycling put me in better aerobic shape, which is only translating to better running times now that I've got about 6 weeks of running in my legs again?
  

So the question is: Is my coach holding me back, or is he a miracle worker??? What do you guys think?

Update: I really appreciate all your input, and it's interesting to hear everyone's take. I have some responses to the comments I've gotten so far.

BANDOBRAS: That's an excellent point. So you think that the fact that I didn't feel good till I chucked his plan in the trash is telling me something? (serous question)

TRIHARDIST: Boo! That's an EXPENSIVE gamble... But I'm coming around to the idea.

GRETCHEN: I was running so hard I had no idea WHERE I was.
To clear up everyone's comments, I WAS following the plan religiously for the first 5 weeks and feeling pretty miserable. Then I decided that he was full of shit and started ignoring it. That was a little over a week ago. After about 9 days of doing my own thing, THEN I blew my own times out of the water.

JUDI: I've only been working with the guy for 6 weeks, and only following what he said for five. I don't think ANYONE can give you that kind of fitness improvement in so little time (legally), they can only tweak something to bring out what was already ready to happen inside. But I'll take my own words into account in my decision. He has been telling me that I've never been rested enough to know what I'm really capable of. However, an ironman ends with a marathon, not a 10K. Less than 3 months out, the longest run I've been assigned so far is 1 hour.

BOBBY: Where did you get the idea that it was a run-intensive program? He has me doing about 60% of my training on the bike (I believe that the bike is not where the problem lies). If I were to follow his plans to the letter, I'd be running less the 15 mi/wk. The biggest change I've made since deciding to ignore him is swapping out bike rides for runs, adding about 50% more running. The run-intensive thing is all Claire and all in the last week.

So this is what 197 bpm feels like

Grease Monkey's pervy roommate invited me to come on a century ride through the White Mountains in New Hampshire this weekend. It sounded like fun, so I told him I'd go. "I'm glad you're coming," he said, "so I won't be the last one up the hills."
Daggers shot out of my eyes and I said, "Oh, I suck at climbing, I have no problem bringing up the rear so that no one feels bad." It was a lie, of course.

He arranged for me to carpool with a friend of his who turned out to be an insufferable motor mouth. He showed up at Grease Monkey's house half an hour late, and the whole ride up was telling me, "If you go 75, we may still be able to get there with 20 minutes to spare." This was in a 50 zone. After a bad experience with a speeding ticket, I don't push the speed limit anymore. But the guy was a navigator for the Coast Guard and couldn't keep his eyes off the needle of my speedometer. "That guy's got a pretty good pace going, follow that Suburban," he would encourage me. It was making me nervous, so I complied. Somewhere in New Hampshire we got pulled over, and I was ready to push the guy out of the car. I can't afford to pay a speeding ticket, let alone the increased insurance.
"Do you know how fast you were going?" the cop asked.
"No, I don't," I said.
"You were going 50, this is a 35 zone. Is there any reason for your hurry?"
"Nothing other than that I have to go to the bathroom, which always makes things feel more urgent," I told him.
"Really? You have to go to the bathroom? Why didn't you stop? There was a Dunkin' Donuts and a gas station back there. Do you want to give me another excuse?"
"No," I said. "I'm not going to lie."
I guess that was the right answer, because he let me off with a warning and Motor Mouth will live to see another day.

When we showed up, we had plenty of time to spare. The Pervy Roommate came over and yanked up my shorts to about my nipples. He does that all the time. He says it looks like I'm "carrying a load in my shorts" or "like I've got a dick," but I know it's so that he can either look at my cameltoe or my ass. I can't wait till Grease Monkey moves out and I don't have to put up with the guy anymore. Then he put a road rash kit in my pocket. "What's that?" I asked.
"We'll be going down some fast descents," he said. "If we bring it, we won't need it."
"Why don't you carry it?"
"Because I've got no room in my pockets." I looked. He had plenty of room in his pockets, he just thought I'd be the most likely to be in the back.

Just as we left, a latecomer showed up. Some of us went on, while others stayed to wait for him. Motor Mouth sat on my wheel yapping away for a 7ish-mile gradual climb. "You know," he said, "you're pushing a much slower cadence than I am. You should really conserve your energy, you've gotta let your aerobic system take care of it." Later, I learned that he has read one and only one book: Chris Carmichael's book. Great, I was talking to one of those people who thinks the only way to ride well is to ride like Lance.

I wanted to drop him right then and there. Instead I put on my most cheerful voice. "Yeah, I tried the high cadence thing for a season. It didn't work for me. I don't really have much motivation to change, since I keep winning this way." Then I popped it into the big ring and sped up a little bit so that he would have to shut up.

The other guy that was with us had a bike that made me cringe. It was an aluminum frame (scoff!) with a giant pannier rack complete with bag, and an attachment on his handlebars so he could fit all his other attachments on his handlebars. He wasn't even wearing a bike jersey, just a tech muscle shirt from somewhere like Planet Fitness. And an Mdot tattoo on his calf. I didn't know what to make of the guy. I can't stand tour riders that carry so much unnecessary shit, but I can't stand Mdot geeks who take themselves too seriously. He was both sides of the spectrum at the same time. We got to the first turn and stopped to wait for everyone else to catch up. Mr. Touring Bike/Mdot stood his bike in the middle of the road and came over to me and Motor Mouth. "What? Where are your guys' kick stands?" he asked in that dry way that means that he was joking. I decided I really liked the guy.

Once everyone else caught up, we started up a several-mile climb together (Bear Notch Road if you know the area). I happened to be in front, and Pervy Roommate started narrating so that he could be the center of attention at all times. "Claire's sitting at the front," he said in a bad British accent to mimic the tour commentators. "She's setting a blistering pace. She's positively dancing on the pedals." I just kept riding. "Hey, Claire. How does it feel to have a guy with a kickstand sitting on your wheel?!" he asked. I had to laugh. Then a twiggy guy who I like a lot went off the front. Me and one other guy responded. Pervy Roommate, Motor Mouth,Mdot Guy, and the others stayed behind. I pushed hard and kept up with the guys, and then chased Twiggy down the 40 mph descent on the other side. The other boys were a few minutes behind us.

The ride went on like that, with the three of us dropping everyone else on all the hills, and then having to stop and wait (at the first stop, we were waiting an hour for everyone to show up). Climbing up one long climb with a few steep "walls" thrown in, Twiggy went back to take a picture of some funny road graffiti. When he made his way back up to me and The Other Guy, he reported on our progress. "You guys are already about a quarter mile up on them," he said. "I passed Pervy Roommate and he goes, 'I fuckin' hate hills, man,' and then he threw a punch at me." Now that Twiggy was up here, he and The Other Guy stepped on it a bit. I was hanging tight, and then we hit the steepest grade of the day: 13%, but it felt like more. I rode as hard as I could, but soon I was seeing spots and breathing like a moribund asthmatic. My heartrate hit 197, and I had to lay off the pace or risk collapsing. I fell back bit by bit, losing some 50m to them in the next couple of miles to the top.

On the threshold of death...

I wasn't feeling all that great. I don't think I was eating regularly enough, and I'd started the day dehydrated. Still, we had no trouble dropping the others, which was good. Motor Mouth was determined to stay on my wheel as long as possible. Twiggy tried to talk to him once. "I've gotta watch her hub, man!" he told him.
"Her hub's a little lower," Twiggy pointed out.
Motor mouth would sit behind me and talk, and talk as he stared at my ass. Twiggy and The Other Guy helped me push the pace until we were riding so fast that Motor Mouth couldn't talk and breathe at the same time. Then we would speed up a little more and he would drop off. Once we couldn't see him behind us anymore, we would lay off the pace–but not so much that he might catch up.

On the final, gradual climb that started around mile 70, I started to crack a little bit. I told my footmen that I had no intention of putting myself in the hospital to keep up with them, and let them pull away. Don't get me wrong, my heart rate was hanging around 180 (I did Patriot this year at an average of 173) and the this is hard, what the fuck am I out here for?! inner monologue was going at full volume (so that I could hear it over my breathing), but I watched the boys pull further and further ahead until eventually I lost sight of them around a bend. By the time I crested the top of the hill I was ready to whimper and whine to the first person who would listen. Unfortunately, my two footmen had waited for me and I wasn't about to let them know how much I was hurting. Instead I thanked them for waiting for little ol' me and kept riding so they wouldn't make me wait for Motor Mouth and the rest of them.

At the bottom of the 14-mile descent that was our reward for the hill, Twiggy stopped at a DQ to wait for everyone else. The Other Guy and I went on alone. I was feeling the effects of riding so hard, and all I wanted was to get off my bike. Not to mention that I had a HUGE saddle sore on my... well... you know. As we rode the last 5 miles into Conway, someone honked at us. It was the Pervy Roommate's girlfriend. "What's she doing here?!" The Other Guy asked. "All the outlets are in the other direction! There's nowhere she could go out here except to pick up the Pervy Roommate!" We rode through the traffic of all the people who had come to the outlets in tax-free New Hampshire to do their back-to-school shopping and laughed at how we were the only ones moving for miles and miles. After stopping at one traffic light I pushed a pedal down and felt the satisfying sensation of my bike jumping forward, accelerating faster than the cars for a second. I swooped around a turning car back onto the shoulder of the road and felt at one with my bike, a machine that let me balance on two inches of razor-thin pressurized rubber and fly down a hill at 45 mph. This is why I love this sport, I thought. That and the fact that most of those guys are way behind me.

The Other Guy and I got in after about 5.5 hours of riding (but 7.5 hours in real time) for 105 miles. Half an hour later, Twiggy and Mdot Guy rolled in all smiles. After another 5 minutes the Pervy Roommate rolled in drooped over his bike next to The Late Guy. Where was my ward? I couldn't leave until Motor Mouth had come in. It turns out that everyone was too irritable by the end of the ride to put up with him. He was bonking, so everyone had dropped him easily. A minute later my phone rang. "Hi, Claire. I... I'm bonking pretty bad. Were we supposed to take a left or a right on Main Street?"

"Right." We'd made rights all day. It was a circle. Mr. Coast Guard Navigator should have known to keep making rights to get back to where he'd started.

Finally, the caboose rolled in 45 minutes after I'd finished. The whole ride home he talked at me about how I should ride a tandem with him. All I kept thinking was, Why? So I can drag your ass around and you can stare at mine?! I wanted to remind him about what he'd said about gear mashers, but that would have been rude.