Challenge Penticton ITU LD Canadian Championship 2016

Finish line, the time in the clock is for
the Pro mens start, 25 minutes ahead.

So I did Challenge Penticton ITU LD Canadian Championships a few weeks ago, with interesting results.  Let me say going into this race, I was sufficiently tapered, and felt fairly fit, although I was experimenting with a trimmed down training schedule.  For example, I only did one long ride of 120k before this race.  I did do sufficient long swims in open water, with training partner Bruce, so that felt fine.


Swim 1:07:55

T1          6:06

Bike    4:06:39

T2           5:20

Run     3:20:40

Finish  8:46:40

Med Tent 2:00:00 ish

Comments on Swim:  Even splits, I was 33 minutes at the turn.  Swells made it a bit fun.  Don't breath while sighting.

Comments on Bike:  Scraped pedal on first turn onto highway.  Chill buddy, its a long race.  Averaged over 30kmh until second MacLean Creek climb.  Saying 'It Doesn't hurt' worked for as long I needed it to.

Comments on Run.  Was not uncomfortable with heat, needed to focus on the ground ahead, otherwise I spent too much time looking for friends going the other way.

The biggest part of the discussion will be about the Med Tent aftermath.

It was a warm day, temp peaked at about 30 degrees.  Fueling and hydration went well, but I took no where near enough electrolytes (only about 8 salt caps, the rest got wet and broke).  For the last few K, I had this weird feeling like I was running on someone elses legs.

After the race, my arms, shoulder to fingertips started tingling, and my tongue tingled and felt like it was swelling, and I was talking with a distinct lisp.  Ally Johnson got me over to the med tent, and first measure had my heart rate at 35, and BP something like 96/56 ( a wee bit low).  So I spent 2 hours wrapped in blankets, drinking as much chicken broth as I could stomach.   Eventually the tingling went away, I started talking somewhat normal.  The lisp kept coming back and going away, and it took until midnight before I was anywhere close to being properly hydrated.

From what I understand now, this is signs of hyponatremia.  The exact definition is as follows:  Normal serum sodium levels are 135 - 145 mEq/liter (135 - 145 mmol/L), mine was 146 the last time my doctor checked it. Hyponatremia is generally defined as a serum sodium level of less than 135 mEq/L and is considered severe when the level is below 120 mEq/L.

Most interesting is that I found paresthesia of the arms and tongue to be symptoms of low electrolytes or low sodium, but paresthesia is not listed as a sign of hyponatremia.  This could be because they really only list the severe symptoms, coma and death being among them.  I have had this happen before, but not combined.  After the Berlin Marathon, in which I ran the last 10k for the first time, only my arms tingled for around 30 minutes after the race.  After all my marathons in the past few years, I have had the tongue tingle/lisp thing going on.   I had always assumed that this was simply dehydration.

It makes sense in this race, in that I trained for heat, and did heat acclimatization in the steam room, building up to 15 minutes at a time, twice a week.  I sweat more quickly and with more volume, which I wanted to stay cool in the heat.   I have always lost a lot of salt in my sweat.  So not taking any salt or electrolytes for the majority of the run would get me low on electrolytes.  I also continued with the same hydration plan after my salt caps broke.  The proper thing to do would have been to drink much less, use the Ph.D drink they were serving, and allow myself to get dehydrated.

Haddon Hustle KOM, or The Last ride of Jake The Snake

https://www.strava.com/activities/645705501

I finally grabbed the KOM for Haddon Hustle, on my trusty steed, Jake the Snake.  I hurt a lot to do this, but really only for the last minute.   It was awesome!

After this ride, Jake the Snake got stolen, reported to the police and insurance, appraised and paid out by adjuster, found and recovered by police 2 days later, and cheque returned in the week.

Need to replace Garmin Sensor, and the front brakes, for some odd reason.

Glad its back, I love riding this bike.

Swimming Lake Bonavista - with Bruce and Nathalie Hagel

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1246055849

Good and weird swim tonight.  We swam 3800m, so we have now done an Ironman distance swim.  The rest of the swim training to the race is gravy, We know we can do the distance, now just to make it wreck us less before going for a bike ride.

Bruce was much faster than I was tonight.  It made me wonder what I was doing wrong, but the garmin indicates that my swim time was not outside of normal.  I think the moving time on the garmin is wrong, and our actual moving time (swimming time) was more like 1:25.  That is a fast ironman swim for us, probably because of the rest breaks, where you get no rest in the actual race.

Being slower than Bruce today really made me focus on my technique, stroke to stroke, trying to keep it perfect (heh) or getting closer to it.  I was tired by the last leg, and glad to be done.

Tomorrow is a long bike ride, which will really test my recover.

Haddon Hustle - yeah, I am not recovered

https://www.strava.com/activities/632744326/segments/15454646308

I was 32 seconds slower than my PR.  I help fairly good speed on the first half, although slightly slower than the record.  Then just died after about a minute, and had a hard time even keeping 30kmh.

So I am still fatigued.  I took it a bit easier during weights, and on the ride home, and an easy evening social run to keep from stiffening up.

Swim tomorrow, we are doing the distance.

Longest swim this training cycle, 3.2k with Bruce Hagel

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1243270184

We have been having Tornado warnings and thunderstorm for several days now, and today looked like it was going to cancel our swim.  Bruce texted to say that he was going to run instead, because the weather was still ugly in the afternoon.  at 5pm, he  He texted to invite for a swim RFN, so I got repacked (equipment still spread out from GWN), and got to the lake in 20 minutes.

Nathalie Hagel accompanied us in a kayak, nice to have the backup.

Our plan was for a 3k swim, and its now 2 days after GWN.  The first leg to the island felt comfortably hard.  leg north didn't feel as good, couldn't decide what, if anything was wrong.  After recovering, we headed out on the first 1k leg,  It started to feel relaxed and comfortable about half way through this lap.  Bruce was still way faster.

On the last leg, Nathalie headed in to get on with the evening, and Bruce and I headed out.  At the beginning, this felt very easy and strong, and I really wanted to know what I was doing right. we ended up at the next three checkpoints (north, island, shore) at about the same time.

I did start to feel some fatigue at the last leg of the swim, but it was not significant.

It appears that I needed to swim just over 1000m, with breaks, in order to shake off the fatigue of the weekend.  What it really did was take that long to get everything properly firing, and getting my technique back sort of in order.  My brain was being hard on me, doubting my swimming ability and question whether I really had maintained or improved my technique in the off-season.

In trying to measure my recovery, I would say that I am comfortably tired, as after a good days training, but not feeling any deeper fatigue.  The bike ride in the morning will be the real test, with the Strava segment "Haddon Hustle", a 2 minute time trial after about 5-10 minutes of warmup.  2 minutes of effort is not enough to hamper recovery if I am still fatigued.

My progression for open water swims this year has been

1 - 800m
2 - 1600m
3 - 1900m  (GWN)
4 - 3200m

and 5 will be 4200m.   We will try to get 4 swims of at least this distance in before I go to Calgary 70.3 and Bruce goes to Ironman Canada - Whistler.

New workout schedule, monday workout - Apr 11

Lots of rolling, work with softball, work with laCross ball.
Worlds Greatest stretch
Angels, which Ian converted to 10lb dumbell single leg deadlifts, with the roller on your toe.  This forced you to move your hips backwards, and put the weight on your heal.
Grace Jones
Core activation, Bear Crawl, back and forth.  Ian wanted roller on hips, but I steadied it out
Down to Gym
Skipping, forward arms across, backward arms on the way back.
Single Leg Explosive Jumping, soft deep landing
Fast Feet, CNS activation.  One foot up, second up, first back, second back fast as you can

Single Leg Hamstring Curl on TRX, 2 seconds in, 1 hold, 4 out
Decline pushups, 4 seconds down, hold 1, 2 up

TRX 'X', Holding palms up, lean away holding TRX, shoulder blades down ,pull up with hands wide-ish, at hip level.
Single Leg step up, with 2x25lb kettlebells

Planks, 10 each arm extensions, 120 seconds
planks, 10 each leg raises, 120 seconds
Planks, 5 x opposites

Stretch and hot tub

Ironman Arizona 2015 - Nov 16, 2015

It's been a few months since IMAZ 2015, so it will be fun to remember it

A year in the making, so to speak.  We started a year ago, volunteering at IMAZ 2014.

Recovery and Training.

Since Challenge Penticton, I have had good training, but nothing compared to in the summer.  It felt really hard to get out for long rides, so the biggest we did was 90km.  Training partner Norm Duval and I rode HIghway 22X to Bragg Creek, then north on 22 to the traffic circle and back.  It is exactly 90k, and makes for a great ride.

For swim training, Bruce Hagel and I did one really cold swim in Lake Bonavista, 2 weeks after challenge.  It was good, but hardly swim training.  I did a weekly swim of between 1500m and 2200m.

For running, I did short runs of 10-16k a couple times a week, no hills, no speedwork.

I continued the twice weekly Triathlon Resistance training at Eau Claire YMCA, and our trainer, Ian Colburn kept the focus on endurance.

Travel to Phoenix

Pre-Race, and writing on the arms.

Race

Setup

There Early, apparently I am a morning person.  Oatmeal for Breakfast, 2x coffee.  Rob cooked me a couple of eggs and toast.

Travel to site OK,  Found a farther out parkade, after getting worried about parking.  Look further into parking for next year.

All filled up bike tires and were able to pass the pump to Helen outside.  Well executed
Setup was good, but forget water for wetsuit.  No warmup means I had to get ready for cold water early.  Found some water for wetsuit, want to try cold water on face before swim.

Swim

Water was cold. Crowded. kept bumping into people.  pretty ungainly getting into the water off the bleachers.  Had trouble breathing, despite like 6 hits of Ventolin.  Was getting negative thoughts, and then thought, What would I do to make it better.  Decided to focus on form and technique. After a few minutes, sure enough, it got better.

Thought I was way behind the swim, thought what if I donèt make the cutoff, oh well, we would be OK, we tried.  Followed this guy with copper armed wetsuit, then realized that it was a sleeveless, his arms were copper. 

Got out of the water in 1:34.   only 4 minutes longer than average

Transition 1

Slow.  Cold. Long. Met Stephen Achilles in the change tent, Only time I saw him all day.

Bike

Got to learn how to pee on the bike.  Seriously.  Had to go like a racehorse after first lap, could not do it. Stopped at first aid station, only small lineup.  From Erin and Helen, I understand that the trick is to get a bottle of water, and spray it on your junk.  You will pee whether you wanted to or not.

Didn;t like the taste of the nutrition in the cold, not fueling well.  Too cold to drink a lot of water.  Worried about dehydration even in the cold.  Lots of salt tablets.  Switched to Gatorade for fuel.  At each aid station, I took a Gatorade, and drank as much of it as I could get down by the throw away zone.   Got enough hydration and fuel, but had to pee lots,

Not bad, faster than Penticton, not the 6 hours I wanted.  It rained for the last lap, so 2 hours of rain and cold

T2

Cold Cold Cold, and slow.   No place in the tent, I asked a volunteer to find me a seat.   Lots of Joking.  Cold.   Hypothermic.

At exit.  They were making rain ponchos out of garbage bags, The volunteer who helped me yelled to get running, get my core warmed up. 

Run

Ran for First three miles. 

Stopped to eat at each aid station.  At the exit, I looked at my arm, said "You came here to run". and started running.  

My quads and hamstrings were shot.  I ran with Glutes and Calfs and did well

I remember giving a guy an earfull.   As I went past on second lap. Told him he was doing well, and he said, no I'm done.  I turned back to him, told him he was not done. He had to just keep walking like he had somewhere to go, and just keep going.  He would get it done.

Back to running, 4:54 run  Wow

Finish

Cold, didn;t get warmed up on massage.  Got clothes on and started to warm up.  Had a pizza sandwich.  It was awesome. I loved having Norm and Rob there, and Helen and Erin.

Results

Swim: 1:34:13

Bike: 6:21:37

Run: 4:54:50

Overall: 13:22:50

T1:  16:16

T2: 15:54