Recently I haven’t been the type of person to talk up my training.  I follow to many blogs with folks constantly talking about how ready they are and that they are going to kill it – only to blow up spectacularly.  As a result I’ve tried to keep my blog posts the last few years on the topic of – ponderings, and other stuff – to document my frame of mind and to help other people out.

Anyways – it’s been a long and tough summer.  I’ve had a number of sub-par performances, and a lot of frustrations, but the last few weeks it’s turned around.  I accepted the fact that Kona will be what Kona will be – and I simply needed to put in the best work I can the last few weeks – and then execute my race.

That mental shift did something, my training has been going great, and I am stoked for the race.  I cannot wait until 7am on October 8th – I’m going to crush it.

At this point before IMWI last year – I was not feeling good in workouts, scared, and freaking out – right now I’m ready to race – NOW – at least mentally.

Physically, I have a few key workouts to go through to fine tune everything – than I will crush it!

For whatever reason the last 12 months or so I have become a running shoe junky – or perhaps just very picky.  I don’t know why, but I have.  I thought I would post my impressions on the shoes I’ve tried over the last year.

New Balance 904 – I’ve run in every NB 900 shoe since the 900.  The 904 was definitely my favorite: firm, responsive, easy to get on, durable.  I really enjoyed the blend of firm cushioning the shoes provided, but the forefoot was thin enough that I still had a nice feel for the ground.  My favorite shoe of the NB 90X series.  Rating: A

New Balance 905 – Same as the NB 904, but with a slightly different tongue that made the shoe difficult to get on in transition.  New balance also made a slight change to the placement of the laces holes that made it difficult for me to dial in my lace tightness.  Rating: A-

Zoot Ultra Tempo 3.0 – On a whim I decided to get a pair of Zoot shoes a try.  Since I prefer to run sock-less, and have always had issues with moisture build up on long runs – I figured these were worth a try.  Compared to the NB 90Xs – these felt a little like boats, but overall very similar feel of the shoe.  My biggest complaint was the availability (or lack there off) and the lacing system.  I really had a tough time getting them cinched tight enough. Rating: B

Saucony Kinvara – A friend (who works for Newton) – convinced me I should come to the running store he works at to give a pair of newtons a try.  I ended up walking out with a pair of Kinvaras.  Initially, I was a big fan – so much so that I immediately bought two more pairs to have a 3 pair rotation.  After a few weeks though I began to get really annoyed with the squishiness of the shoe.  They didn’t have nearly the responsiveness that the NB 904/905 of the Zoot had.  I had major problems getting the lacing right - too loose or too tight – I just couldn’t find the right “setting”.  Rating: B

Saucony A4 – Despite the things I didn’t like about the kinvara – I was really drawn to their weight, and the flat insole (4mm drop).  I decided to give the A4s a try.  Everything I read seemed to indicate that they were much more responsive then the A4s, light, and had a flat insole.  I’ve only done a handful of runs in them, but I really enjoy them so far.  I have yet to run longer then an hour in them, but I will shortly. On the plus side – it was very very simple to get the lacing dialed in.  Rating: A

New Balance 1190 – I was disappointed that New Balance dumped the 900 series – which really lead me on this journey of new shoe testing.  After growing annoyed with the Kinvara – I decided I’d pick up a pair of 1190s and give them a shot.  Like the A4s, I only have a handful of runs in them (mostly long runs) – and to this point I have to say I’m pretty disappointed with the changes.  New Balance lowered the insole a few mm’s, ,but kept the drop consistent with it’s predecessor.  Compared to the A4, the 1190 is much softer to run in, and the heel is HUGE (compared to the Kinvara/A4).  My biggest complaint is the lacing (are you noticing a theme).  I’ve had a really difficult time getting the lacing right so the shoe feels like it fits.  I also don’t like th heel cup of the shoe.  Despite a summer of barefoot running and reinforcing my callouses, my first barefoot run in this shoe results in a huge blister on my heel.  Yuck.  Moisture is a big problem as well – this shoe is like a sponge.  A definite step backwards from the 905, and a huge step backwards from the 904.  Rating: C

I’m going to run the A4s out and probably pick up another pair.  I may also give something ike the Asics Piranha or Addias Rocket a try - we’ll see.  I’m definitely digging the low heel drop, but I continue to be plagued by the lacing and moisture problems.  We shall see.

This season has been filled with a multitude of starts, false starts and changes of direction for me – me searching for a secret that I thought I was missing (but in truth I had).  If you’ve read my blog with any regularity over the years or months – you’ll have seen the last few months contain a few themes: a lack of posting and confusion.  That same period of time has seen me race with mixed results, train with a variety of different approaches, with building level of frustration and mixed acceptance of the situation.

However while my mind was busy over analyzing the situation, questioning myself, and trying to determine the proper path – my body was busy doing what was asked of it, even when too much was asked – it stepped up and offered all that it could – waiting.

Waiting for me to mentally come full circle, process the lessons of the last 6 months and realize this isn’t complicated.  Work is required.  Rest is required.  How much, when you do it, and how you do it are unimportant.

A few weeks ago I watched Mark Allen speak, I was struck by a comment of his (paraphrasing) – “Hellriegal was 4 mintues in front of me with 8 miles to go, I had made up 30 seconds per mile until this point.  I knew I couldn’t outsprint him, so I was ready to quit.  Than I realized that I was waiting for a billboard on the Queen K to say “Mark, if you give 100% right now – you will win.”"  Life doesn’t have those sorts of guarantees, let alone personalized billboards with the message you need – when you need it…

Once I was ready to turn my mind off and committed to the work and the process, my body was ready.  Yesterday it told me it was.  It kept the faith.

Why did it all turn out like this for me? I had so much promise. I was personable. I was bright. Oh, maybe not academically speaking, but I was perceptive. I always know when someone’s uncomfortable at a party. It all became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I’ve ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have in every aspect of life, be it something to wear, something to eat… It’s often wrong.

In the time since my last post I’ve come to believe that I’ve been approaching this all wrong.   After the Triple T, and Lake Mills, I had high hopes for the Rochesterfest Triathlon a few weeks ago. I felt that as long as some fast Minnesotan – David Thompson – didn’t show up, I would be able to easily be in the running for the win – and as long as I wasn’t dumb should be able to walk home with a fairly major race win.  Despite never racing in Minnesota before, this is what my athlinks/google stalking of what I was able to deduce the usual suspects of SE MN tri scene to be – and their past results at this race and other races this year.  The glimpses I had seen from racing and training, combined with physics told me that I should dominate the dojo.

Confident? Cocky? Aggressive?  Absolutely. Realistic?  After my season thus far, I felt so.

Not being able to put faces to my internet research I intended to start the swim conservatively and locate the swimmers as things unfolded.  A couple hundred meters into the swim, I located the fast guys 10 to 20 meters in front of me.  Not wanting to swim by myself, I decided to put in a strong effort to either close the gap, or make it such that a good run on the beach between loops would put me on their feet.  I was able to pull that off flawlessly, I spent the second 750 meters of the swim drafting like a champ. I came out of the water 4th, and was out onto the bike second.

I spent the first few minutes getting situated, settling my head, and assessing the situation.  There was one guy in front of me, and another shortly behind gaining quickly.  “Fine, I’m going to let him come around and then let him set the pace for a bit, and I will make a move once I see how I feel.”

As he pulled around, I let him open up the 10 meters, then I went to punch the gas to stay there.  265 watts.  I took my foot off the gas for a second, and put the pedal through the floor – 280 watts. “WTF.” is all I could come up with.  I had swam perfectly, no signs of over-swimming as I moved through T1 – I was with it, not dazed, not breathing hard, but here I was and my red-line was only 280 watts?

The run?  More of the same.  Based on the context of my season up to that point,  I would have considered the pace I mustered the bottom end of an acceptable half-iron.

I’ll spare you the blow by blow details of the race.  I managed to win the hard fight for 4th place (by mere seconds).  However, much of the time of the race (and drive home) was spent in thought and then in conversation with Mary – about what happened, what went wrong, if this was the start of a repeat of 2009.

I was really, really perplexed.  Training under Mike had gone well, training after mike had gone well – but *hard*.  I had been gradually that hitting my run intervals was getting tougher.  I was managing on the bike, but those workouts were no cake walk either.

I also looked at a bit more historic basis and noticed trends of being able to really nail threshold intervals – crushing them at times, and at other times failing my threshold intervals or finding them horrible rather than merely uncomfortable.

Datapoints such as my highest 60 minute power ever being in January and other tidbits like my entire 2009 season, pigman, and other fantastic flameouts in training or racing floated through my thoughts, Steve Johnson’s IMCDA race report - 4x runs a week and a 3:03 IM marathon!

Between my thoughts, feedback from Mary, some smart people I poked and prodded, friends – primarily Matt and Eric – I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve pretty much spent a lot of my triathlon career under-recovered.  I won’t use the word overtrained – as that implies a pretty serious state – that requires focused, long term recovery.  I practiced the more is more approach, but failed to apply the full approach: More is more, unless it is to much.  Then, less is more.

Coming to that conclusion was exciting, terrifying, embarrassing, and rewarding all at once.

Exciting: This could be the “secret” training key that I have been searching for!

Terrifying: I have to train less/easier – OMG!!!

Embarrassing: My freak-out prior to the triple t was probably unwarranted – and Mike *was* most likely sending me on the right path, and introduced a lot of stress into my life and the lives of others – needlessly.

Rewarding: If this proves to be right, the act of finally figuring out the next piece in the puzzle is HUGE!

Time will tell if this line of thought is right, and if I have the discipline to see it through – it’s going to be scary – the instinct part of me is already screaming bloody murder.

Time to see if this rabbit hole leads anywhere.

I have a few Pro Tour guys that I coach.

Want to know how long their recovery rides are?

1 hour- less than 200 watts and usually are about 14miles long.

That’s 14mph avg speed…….  If you are riding faster than 14mph and longer

than 1hour or 1hour and half max, you are not doing a recovery ride.

It’s EMBARRASSINGLY slow.

–Hunter Allen

I did the Lake Mills Triathlon a few days ago. Despite being 7th overall, it was in my opinion, my best untapered triathlon performance to date. My run time was darn close to being a 5k PR. My GPS measured it a touch short, so it may not be a huge 20 second PR, but it’s definitely close. Beyond that, I had a slightly different distance measure coming back as going out – so…. I raced to my plan of get out of the water towards the front of the race and then bike as hard as I can. I managed to hold my own pretty well against some guys who have traditionally been much faster (10+ minutes @ IM) than me. I exited T2 right on the feet of Cam Knuth, but in the fumble of putting my GPS on, I was gapped a bit – and could never close it down.  In hindsight, I should have raced to try to close the gap rather than run my pace.

Confidence gained, lesson learned. Next up is an Olympic distance race in Rochester, MN. I’m also contemplating doing the Pleasant Prairie Triathlon on the 26th. With Hawaii being in October – I feel like racing is a good opportunity to push myself harder then I would or could do in training – and I won’t burn up motivation by racing a lot close to the big day.

This winter I had a bad bout of dishonesty with myself, which lead to quite a downward spiral of frustration and left me with a very sour taste for triathlon and life. To put my behavior in terms you would apply to a child (since I was acting like one) – I acted out.

To share the story and allow you to draw your own conclusions I’ll start at the beginning:

At Ironman Wisconsin last year, I had a fantastic race: my normal swim, a crazy fast run (4th amateur!), and a good for me, but crummy relative to those I “race” against. I walked away from the race buoyed by the knowledge that if I could gain the ability to ride a bike comparable to my run or swim – my goal of finishing an Ironman as the first age grouper would be mine to screw up.

After some fun racing, and a break in the month of October – which interestingly enough I ended with a 15k running race where I barely averaged faster than my run time in Madison – I embarked on a quest to develop a soul crushing bike.  My plan was to give the Endurance Nation Out Season Plan a try.  I figured 16 weeks of brutal bike/run work would do the trick on the bike – and make my run even faster!

For those who aren’t familiar with the endurance nation plans out season plans – they are a TON of work – on the surface it seems like the perfect recipe.  Here is a paraphrased sample week from the plan for your pleasure:

• Monday: Off
• Tuesday: ~70’ Bike w/ 2×20 @ FTP – Run after
• Wednesday: Run: 3×2 miles @ Half marathon Pace
• Thursday: ~70’ Bike w/2×15 @ FTP
• Friday: Run: 3×1 mile @ Threshold
• Saturday: 70’ Bike w/ 2×15 @ FTP
• Sun: 70’ Bike w/ 2×20 @ FTP – Run After

I don’t have the plan in front of me (I ought to burn it), but that gives you the idea of the work being done.  For the first two months of the plan I did not swim at all, and over the course of the first 8 weeks – built into running 6 times weekly, all easy except for the two quality runs.  I don’t think I ran longer than an hour from November 1 until early March – and didn’t bike much more than 90 minutes during that same time frame.

The first few weeks of the plan, some miraculous things happened, I observed a significant jump from my baseline FTP and T-pace.  I posted multiple Top 10 All-time 20 minute power numbers; I ran a 10k and set a PR of nearly 2 minutes!

In early January my motivation was at an all-time high – I was eager and ready to go for the next 8 weeks – looking forward to ending this 16 week stretch with some impressive results.

Only that didn’t happen – in mid-January I started noticing a troubling trend – my power numbers on the bike began slipping.  Slipping is putting it mildly – they fell like a rock.  Over the course of a few weeks my sustainable power dropped nearly 40 watts.  I chalked it up to changes I made to my bike fit – and kept pushing.

Now comes the part of the story where I should have taken an honest look at the situation.  Despite writing a blog post about how to approach training during this time of year – which isn’t perfect advice, but is fairly sound advice – in that it strongly advocates including enough rest in your regimen, as we get stronger via recovery, along with the need to modify the training stimulus periodically to continue improvement.  I convinced myself I was just being a wimp on the bike and I needed to push through it.  So I started forcing the issue – only to watch things plummet further and further.  Interestingly my bike suffered much worse than my run.

If I had been honest with myself – I would have realized that I simply wasn’t resting enough and I was trying to work too hard.  I even went so far as to have a few rational moments – some of which are evident on my blog.

This whole story culminated in early April after a time trial workout with some friends.  While I won the bet/race – my power output was pathetic – I was saved by a superior array of equipment and aeroness.  I immediately fell into an emotional/manic state – with me being convinced that the only way out of this situation was to hire a coach.

To bring the story to a quick end before I bore you too much – after working with my coach for approximately 5 weeks – I was struggling with the process of being coached.  I think it was part me and my beliefs, part coach and his beliefs, combined with a realization that the process of discovery and experimentation was a huge portion of my enjoyment for triathlon.  Fortunately (time will tell) – I realized that I needed to be honest with myself about what I wanted out of triathlon – and parted ways with my coach.  I do believe that he would have made me rather fast, but we simply weren’t the right match.

I think had I not leaped into being coached in such an emotional state I would have probably made a more informed decision and selected a better for me.  That said – I did walk away with the importance of rest reinforced – and some confidence boosters that resulted from testing metrics that will help me regardless.

So in a few words I’ve pretty much summarized my triathlon life since last November – you may be asking yourself what’s the point – how is this relevant to honesty?  Well, if you examine the high points of the story, you’ll see a lot of emotional decision making – which resulted in impulsive choices – that lead to a pretty undesirable state of Scott.  When you couple that with the things my intellectual brain was saying on my blog or to my friends when being asked for advice – you’ll see that I wasn’t being honest with myself – which made it difficult for me to live the life I wanted to live.

At the more extreme end of self-dishonesty, it starts to become very easy to begin live a dishonesty life in general because if you can lie to yourself, imagine how easy it can be to lie to others.  Fortunately, I didn’t progress that far.

Food for thought.

I need to give a short plug to Kurt Kinetic for incredible customer service…

Here’s an email I sent out early last month with some postive feedback about my experiences with Kurt Kinetic trainers.

Hey folks -

I’m not normally one to send out a mass anonymous email, but I felt the need to email everybody I could think of that rides a bike – telling you to buy a Kurt Kinetic trainer.

I’ve been having some issues with my 4+ year old Kurt kinetic trainer that I’ve logged untold miles on(many many thousands), staying latched and keeping the bike stable and safe in the frame.

I emailed Kurt asking them about the issue, prepared to purchase a new frame or even a new trainer, but NO – Kurt tells me – don’t worry about it, we’ll send you a new frame AND a shipping label to send the old frame back to us, so we can test it and make things better.

Since I can’t support this great customer service by purchasing another trainer (I already have 2 Kurt trainers), I felt the least I could do was to email a bunch of people and encourage them to buy from Kurt – as they claim to have a truly lifetime warranty and they definately stand by it.

http://www.kurtkinetic.com/lifetime_warranty.php

To other businesses out there – *that* is how you treat your customers.  FWIW – I’ve had similar experiences with SRM USA and Saris for my powertap.

This past weekend marked my 5th completion of the Triple-T in 6 attempts.  I’ll post a more detailed race report in a bit after I get it written up, but I have some brief thoughts.

Matt and I ended up as the third place overall Male team.  When you consider the level of competition at the race, that’s a pretty solid result.  This race keeps getting faster and faster.

Matt earned the BAMF of the year award from me.  I am in awe of how deep he dug on Sunday to keep moving – it was truly heroic.  Someday songs will be sung about that run.

My buddy Nick crushed it.  I learned a bunch about him that I never suspected – even though I spent 3 years of college swimming doing dry-land workouts with the guy.

It’s certainly been a while since I posted.  Reasons for the long gap include, but are not limited to

• Laziness (for writing)
• Disillusion with triathlon
• Craziness in life
• Even more craziness in life

Fortunately – even though I haven’t posted much I’ve been training consistently and am in a pretty good place.  Hopefully after this – bring the world up to speed post – I’ll return to some regularly programming.

The primary factor in keeping me from posting was a crisis of faith – in terms of training.  While my run progressed very nicely over the winter, my bike continued to be my bike and little improvement was seen – this basically resulted in Athlete Scott losing faith in Coach Scott – and Coach Scott wondering if Athlete Scott might be right.

Fortunately after much deliberation Coach Scott and Athlete Scott decided it might be best to seek out some professional help and let a voice outside of the skull take on the coaching responsibilities.  I felt that despite being comfortable in my knowledge of the sport – the energy spent managing the emotions and planning were taking away from my enjoyment of the sport.

I’m offcially on week 2 of being a coached athlete, and am very much enjoying the act of doing the work and asking questions ask an intellecutual pursuit.

I think that covers Disillusion and craziness – laziness deserves no explanation.  So what’s even more craziness?  Well, that is the fact that the Bowe family is on it’s way to gaining a new member.  If you didn’t know, Mary and I are in the process of adopting a child, on April 4th we got a phone call that we had been matched with a child, a healthy boy!  Ethan is just over 7 months old – and will probably be around 11 months old when all of the legal paperwork is complete and we can travel to meet him and bring him home!  It might be just in time for Hawaii!!  The days are numbered for my simple life – but I think that something more exciting is just around the corner!!!

Check back in a week or so for the continuation of my series on training!