3/4/2003

Well, there is not too much to report so far. But the year is about to start for real!

I began my training early in january and since then I've been consistenly riding and running and swimming. My focus was probably on riding and swimming till now. I regularly was in a stroke clinic with Pete Kain and Becky Gibbs at AVAC which helped me a lot. With regularly I mean at least once a week, sometimes twice. And I did additional swims too, but so far the focus was on technique. The same is true for the bike. I started visiting a spinning class once a week and finally learnt how to get out of the saddle (a technique I simply didn't have in my toolbox before). It came in very handy on my probably toughest bike ride I've ever done a few weeks ago. It was a ride of about 50 miles but it had looots of climbing (about 3800 ft of climbing according to my heart rate monitor), including Old Page Mill road (a pretty long, sustained, hard climb) and then on Skyline Blvd and down to Saratoga. A nice ride, but a killer. Just for the fun of it: here is a snapshop of how my Polar S710 saw that ride:

I guess it's pretty obvious which of these lines is the altitude profile *laugh*. Some of the information below the chart is incorrect because the speed sensor (blue line) acted up - I obviously did not ride 55 mph down the hill to Saratoga -- it's way too curvy for that, and I didn't teleport to the bottom of OldPage Mill Rd either.

Other things I did since last season: I also did another bikram yoga bootcamp which helped a lot as well. I also try to do more hill running and I found a wonderful place to do so very close to where I live now (St. Josephs Open space preserve in Los Gatos).

There are a couple of things coming up in the next few weeks:

March 15: AVAC sprint triathlon (first race of the year)
March 30: San Jose Mercury 10k
April 5: Tierra Bella bicycle tour (I'll do either 80 miles or a very hilly century)

And just a month after that we have Wildflower already...!

So, stay tuned. The year is just getting under way :)

3/8/2003

Wohooo - another tough bike ride. Today we went up Mt. Hamilton. It took me 1 hour 53 minutes for the climb. I was not really going for speed, but I doubt I could have made it much faster than that. The fastest guy in our group was about 15 minutes faster (pretty good). This climb is essentially an 18 mile long moderately steep climb with just two short downhills in between. Mt. Hamilton (location of the Lick Observatory) is the tallest peak in the Bay area with 4200 ft elevation. You have a gorgeous view from up there - unfortunately today was a bit hazy, but I guess that's normal for the Bay area (pollution).

Here is somebody else's site about a Mt. Hamilton ride with lots of nice photos (they claim on that page that very few people would need a triple chainring on that ride. Well, I'm not ashamed to admit I'm one of them ;) I love my triple chain ring -- or rather my knees love it...)

This was the second ride where I used a new kind of drink: "Sustained Energy". It seems to work really well for me. I never felt like I was running out of energy. My leg muscles got tired, of course, but that's a muscular endurance issue. I think I'll keep using this stuff for long events. I doubt I would have had as 'easy' a ride with just water or - say - gatorade. I still am experimenting to find the right concentration for me though. Today I used 1.5 scoops for each bottle. And I didn't even use an energy gel till I was at the top. On the Old Page Mill Rd. ride a few weeks ago I had used 2 scoops per bottle. Both variants seem to work for me. This time I wanted to try it with "endurolytes" to get additional electrolytes, but I forgot to mix them in in my rush to get out the door in the morning. Stay tuned on that.

Anyway. Great ride. And then came the 18 mile long steep downhill - yikes! I think I'll need new brake pads now *laugh*

And just to show off, here is the altitude profile from my HRM again. It's really odd just how straight this line is. So it really is a sustained, consistent climb, and doesn't just feel like one. If you look at the red line (heart rate) you can easily see that it was a very consistent effort -- very different from the line on the Old Page Mill Rd ride. According to the HRM the ride totals almost 4800 ft of climbing. No wonder my knees feel a bit worn out now :) The speed sensor was again fussy (especially on the downhill), that's why the distance is not entirely correct. The ride was about 38 miles total.

3/15/2003 - AVAC Sprint Triathlon

First race of the season. Same race as last year. Almost same result. This time I managed only 4th place in my age group - but I missed 3rd only by one second. Overall I improved and that's what counts. I had a bit of a problem on the run though. The run was a bit shorter this year so I thought I'd push harder and I guess I pushed a bit too hard. I suddendly had cramps in my diaphragm and had to stop for about a minute :( We had a lot of luck with the weather because everybody had expected storm and rain and cold. Instead we got nice temperatures and sunshine :)

So overall I'm quite happy with the result. And I wasn't really in top shape yet to start with. It's very early in the season after all.

At least now I have really established a trend: first race of the season always seems to get me a medal. The problem is only that according to that trend I won't get any other award for the rest of the year :( Well, maybe we can change that this year...

4/18/2003

What? No update for a full month? What's going on?

Well, not too much unfortunately. The last month was pretty sub-optimal, although it started just perfect: TRIbe had the annual Wildflower training camp -- essentially a trip to Lake San Antonio to ride and run the race course for the upcoming Wildflower triathlon and also check if our wetsuits still fit after the winter (you need one in the 62 degree lake) It's a pretty tough course, but a beautiful course too. Almost no traffic and you are in the middle of nowhere and the place is swarming with triathletes, because just about everybody is there to train in the weeks before Wildflower. Lots of fun. The weather was perfect and a couple of us stayed in a cabin we had rented, overlooking the lake, eating good food etc. A nice little vacation.

But the week after that I had a conference and in that week I barely slept at all. I was so exhausted after that, that I got seriously sick so I had to scrap my plans to run the San Jose Mercury 10k. This was a hard decision, because this race has become a tradition for me since I started doing Triathlons :( The following weekend I still felt pretty bad so I had to skip also the Tierra Bella Century ride for which I was registered already (and I was so much looking forward to that ride! It would have been the perfect training ride for Wildflower too!).

Just about when I was feeling OK I had to go on another business trip to the east coast. But right after that I went on a short vacation to a little tropical island for scuba diving (I got well just in time to be able to actually do that trip). These few days of vacation helped me recover and in the past 2 days I finally exercised again - so that means that for almost a month I have done practically nothing. Not good. And now I have just about 2 weeks left to get halfway in shape to do Wildflower. That's quite a challenge. At least I'm rested from my dive trip.

Why, oh why must I always start my race season by being sick?

5/5/2003 - Wildflower Triathlon Festival (Olympic distance)

Finally an update. And a good one too. This last weekend was the Wildflower Triathlon Festival. That means: one lake, three races, thousands of triathletes, lots of fun. This time was a bit different because the weather was really, really bad. At least on Friday and Saturday. Those poor folks doing the long course and the mountain bike triathlon had to cope with wind, rain (LOTS of rain), mud, cold weather. It was really rough. Because the trails were so muddy the run course had to be changed and the whole race which is a pretty tough one to start with got even tougher. Lots of people DNFed on Saturday and I know quite number of people who just decided to stay in their tents in the morning or to just cheer.

Then Saturday evening the weather suddenly improved and on Sunday the conditions were pretty good for the Olympic distance race. The water was still quite choppy (and had a strong current), there was lots of wind on the bike course and there was the tough hill on the run which came from the course change. But the sun was shining and it wasn't too cold, so that was quite OK. Nobody would have complained because we all had seen what the weather was like just a day earlier ;)

As I said, it was very tough - definitely the toughest race I've ever done. Considering I was not in top shape I didn't expect a stellar performance, but did actually quite well (except on the run). It would have been nice to break 3 hours, and I would have managed to do that on the regular course, but on the modified course I missed the 3 hour mark by a few minutes, unfortunately.

With that time I was 83rd in age group M35-39 (out of 208) and 762nd overall (out of about 2500). Not stellar, but not bad either. The medal in the photo is a finisher's medal. Most races I know of don't give you a medal for 83rd place ;)

But as it was such a hard race I'm quite happy with the result, actually. And now the race bug has really bitten again and I can't wait for the next race :) Stay tuned!

5/18/2003 - South Bay Triathlon - UVAS XI - Morgan Hill, CA

Let's just say this upfront -- this is one of my favorite races, maybe my favorite race. The coarse has a bit of everything, but not too much of it. It has rolling hills, but also flat areas, fast downhills, one pretty steep climb (but not too much), gorgeous scenery, a nice and pretty clean lake and the race is not too big (about 800 participants). It really is a secret favorite of a lot of people I know - and I guess most of us don't talk too much about it because otherwise it would be as hard to get into this one as it is to get into some of the bigger name races... this year the scenery was even nicer because we had cold and rainy weather for such a long time -- the hills were actually green and there were still lots of wildflowers blooming along the course. For a few photos check out the 2002 report on the race. I might also post a few photos of this year's race here when I get them.

Does this Tshirt design look familiar? They just used the same design again, which is a bit unusual.

So how did I do? Well, I was a bit faster than last year, but only barely. The conditions were actually a bit harder than last time. It was windy on the bike and there were areas in the lake where the water was actually quite choppy. Fortunately I had trained for that at Wildflower 2 weeks ago ;) Consistent lack of sleep over the past week made me feel pretty weak and unenergized so being a bit faster in slightly harder conditions is probably a big win. Otherwise I'm not super happy with the swim (it took me a long time to find my rythmn) and bike results (definitely not the bike's fault because it ran really well today). On the run I pushed very hard and I actually gained over 1 minute over last year. The transitions (especially T1) were faster. All of this added up to about 13 seconds faster than last year. Not much, but at least there was improvement. I just wish the swim would have been better because I did actually do a lot of work on my swim stroke to prepare for this season and it didn't show at all today.

Last year I placed 170th overall. This year I moved down just a little bit and made 176th place overall (obviously a couple of faster people raced this year)

6/14/2003 - Santa Cruz Ocean Festival - Splash-n-Dash

A nice little race in Aptos, near Santa Cruz. Organized by a new event company. Very nice. Check them out and support your new, local, smaller races!!! www.bythebeachproductions.com

OK, enough advertising. The festival had a 1.2mile, a 2.4 mile ocean swim and a little thing called a "Splash-n-Dash": 800 yd ocean swim and then a 2.5k run on the beach. Only... I think it was more a 5k or maybe even 3.5 miles long. But no matter. It was a great race and a lot of fun. I did it to try swimming in the ocean to prepare for the cold water I'll encounter at my Alcatraz swim. Everybody makes always such a fuss about the cold water. Indeed when I first walked in I instantly felt my feet go numb. But when I swam it was no problem at all and the water felt just right. Of course I did wear a wetsuit and a hothead (neoprene swim cap to keep the head warm). But the weather was perfect and I could imagine doing the swim even without the wetsuit (but I probably would keep the cap on).

My time wasn't spectacular, but it felt good and I had fun. That's what counts. Once I get the tshirt in the mail, I'll put a photo up :)

6/22/2003 - San Jose International Triathlon

Well, if you have read through my triathlon updates you know that this is a very special race for me, because here, 3 years ago, it all started... or maybe I didn't mention this anywhere? Well, 3 years ago, I still lived across the street from Lake Almaden. One sunny Sunday I was rudely awoken by lots of noise outside. I was wondering what the heck was going on, dressed, and walked to the lake... and I saw all these fit, happy, good-looking, incredibly sexy people swimming, cycling and running. And I thought to myself. This is cool. I want to do this too. As I had some issues with my back and hips I decided to approach this gently and slowly. I never was a runner after all and that's what worried me most: to mess up my back even more. So I gave myself a full year to finish my first triathlon (sprint distance only to start with). And I succeeded in that quest. The year after that I finished my first Olympic distance triathlon (it happened to be SJIT) and it was a great race and I had a great time. And this year I'm even going for the half-Ironman already. Needless to say: my back and hips are stronger than they ever were, but they are still an issue occasionally. But overall, starting triathlon was probably one of the most significant decisions I made in my life and one that changed my life more than most other decisions I've ever made. And I haven't regretted it one second in these wonderful last three years.

That's why SJIT will always be a very special race for me -- it's sort of my home race, in more than one sense.

Now you know :)

So how did it go this year? The only way I can describe it is "spectacularly well". I would even go so far as to say that this was the best race I've ever run, because it was also the first race where I felt confident enough to really go for it and race in all three legs of the race. Typically I always hold back a bit somewhere, either on the swim or the run, so I'm not too worn out to drive home or such. This time, a friend was there to drive me home and I decided to just go for it. I also did something else very deliberately this time: I spent a lot of time mentally preparing myself for this race, doing race visualizations, and getting just into the ride race mood and also working with a lot of psychological tricks during the race. And it really made a difference.

I was not sure just how well I would do because last year I had such a great result that I knew it would be very hard to improve on it. And the conditions were harder this year, because we had a pretty stiff headwind on a large part of the bike course. So I expected to be a bit slower. Also, off the bike my legs were seriously shot from hard hammering agains the headwind. And I got bad side stitches when I started running so I even had to stop for a minute.

Despite all that I ended up being faster on the swim AND the run (I PRed!!) and just a bit slower on the bike, which made me -- overall -- faster by over 2 minutes, which is nothing short of a spectacular result, I think. So I'm very happy with this years SJIT.

PS: Why are there two Tshirt designs above? The dark one is the actual race Tshirt. The yellow one (which I like almost better) is the shirt I got for volunteering at the SJMB (Mountain Bike) Triathlon, the day before. That race had a light blue shirt which was also very nice.

6/28/2003 - just a quick update

This one was a training weekend. I did a long bike ride and a long run - the longest I've done so far (14 miles). That's no enormous, I know that, but it's a lot for me, because I'm not really a runner. And it was partly hilly too. So I was hurting for a few days. But it felt good to finally run more than just the half-marathon distance. Over the next 2 months I'll try to increase the distance of my long runs (every 2 weeks or so) towards 20 miles. And in mid September I'm planning to try to run my first marathon... This in combination with the Catfish 2.4 mile swim is all preparation for maybe, possibly, if the gods are with me, ... trying a full Ironman next year. But first we'll see how the half-ironman will feel, in a month *yikes*!

7/6/2003 - Alcatraz Challenge (Aquathlon)

And another finisher medal hanging from my reading lamp :)

The Alcatraz challenge consists of an open water swim from Alcatraz to the main land. That's about 1.5 miles of cold water, with strong currents, swells and sometimes quite choppy. It's a challenging swim. And if you do the Aquathlon, like I did, you then put on your running shoes and run over the Golden Gate bridge to Marin county and back (about 7.5 miles). It's a spectacular course when you have nice weather and you can soak in gorgeous views of San Francisco.

Unfortunately, not this weekend. Although we had a brief glimpse of sunlight over Marin before the race, it fogged in again very quickly. Sometimes the bridge wasn't even visible. But what was worse was that the shore was sometimes very heard to so, which means that it was difficult to sight for what direction to swim. It didn't help that my goggles fogged up in addition to that. And the water was really quite choppy. The current is running an estimated 2 mph which adds to the - erm - fun in this race. Essentially you have to aim not for where you want to end up, but for a place much farther east. The current carries you the 1-2 miles west that you need to reach your destination. If you instead aim from your destination, the current sweeps you out to sea and you can keep swimming for a few thousand extra miles till you reach Hawaii. Of couse a kayak or boat would pick you up before that would happen...

Although people keep saying it's so cold in the Bay etc. it was actually not that bad. Yes, it had only 58 degrees, but I wore a wetsuit (plenty of people didn't) and when you swim hard this is really not half as bad as it sounds. However, with the choppy water and the fog I enjoyed the swim less than I had expected. I later found out that we had probably the worst conditions in the 23 year history of the event. Which makes me feel much better. So maybe I'll do another Alcatraz swim after all :)

I mean... it WAS fun. It just was tough fun.

I didn't go for speed, neither on the swim nor the run and especially not in the transition (I even helped another guy get out of his wetsuit and had something to eat) so I ended up taking a bit under 2 hours. My swim time was about 53 minutes, transition was 5:30 ish and the run was 56 minutes. Not a great time, but that was not the point this time.

7/19/2003 - Tri For Fun #2, Pleasanton, CA

I really like the short and fun-oriented Tri For Fun race series. Last year I did the whole series, this year my calendar allows only this one. The TriForFun #2 in 2002 is (so far) the only race I ever DNF'ed on (Did Not Finish). So I was anxious to finishe the race this year. I was also hoping I might finish it in under an hour, but not enough sleep in the week before the race pretty much eliminated all chances of that. I still had a good and enjoyable race (except the swim - I got stuck behind a group of people who kicked me again and again , did breast stroke kicks seemingly just to annoy me, stopped suddenly, then kicked out without warning, and and and.) Less fun than usual. The lake was very full this time and the water was nice and clean and pretty warm. Overall a nice race.

Obviously, it's going downhill with me... ;)

(but factor in that I was tired and did take it easy.)

7/20/2003 - Catfish Open Water Swim, Lexington Reservoir, Los Gatos, CA

Just one day later I certainly had not entirely caught up on sleep. So I was still a bit tired when I boarded the bus to the reservoir, way too early in the morning. This year's catfish is the final time this event will be held at Lexington Reservoir, unfortunately. So I'm glad I did it (also it's a beautiful tshirt!). Last year I did the 1.2 mile version. This year I'm trying the longer one: 2.4 miles. That's the longest swim I've ever tried! The longest swim I did so far was the Alcatraz challenge and a few other 1.5 milers at Almaden Lake (open water swimming every wednesday). The problem is that the Almaden lake swim is only one hour long and I just cannot swim much more than 1.5 miles in that time. So it was a big jump to go from 1.5 miles to 2.4 miles. And to make it a bit more challenging, I decided to do it without a wetsuit. And, as I said, I was not perfectly well rested.

To make a long story short: it was hard. I seriously struggled towards the end and my form fell apart. But I did finish it. I had hoped to finish in about 1 hour 20 but it took me 8 minutes longer. I took 99th place (out of just around 110 or so). So it was not a great time, but I finished and that's what counts. And the beautiful Tshirt, of course. That's really why we are all doing this in the first place, right? ;)

7/27/2003 - Wharf-to-Wharf (Santa Cruz to Capitola) - almost 10k (6 mile) run

I hadn't done a "fun run" for a long time and it was good I did one again. Wharf to Wharf, like Bay to Breakers, is a classic fun run in the area. Thousands of runners, a fun atmosphere, music groups lining the race course, people spraying runners with garden hoses, people running in funny costumes etc. That's all part of what makes these races so much fun. Well, I almost wouldn't call it a race because a large part of it is really a walk (just imagine 15000 runners on a 2 lane street...) It took me over 2 minutes before I even reached the start line! And then I more or less walked for almost a mile before I could start jogging (not running yet - that took 2 more miles)

But I didn't care. I didn't want to exert myself because I'm tapering for next week. Also I wasn't feeling so hot today anyway - I'm nursing this strange cough for a few days already. My suspicion is that it's related to the horrible air quality we have in the area this month. The cough and -- I guess -- related light bronchitis was very noticable today. So I took it very easy on the run. My time was around 2 minutes per mile slower than in a real race. So I came in approximately 54 minutes. But it was a lot of fun and I did get a nice run in to stay in shape for the big one next week. Let's hope the cough and the breathing issues are gone then, otherwise this will be a very hard race (or none at all)

8/10/2003 - an early end of this season ? :(

Bad news: 2 weeks later and I'm still coughing. My condition has not only not improved, but it got worse (then it get a bit better, then worse again). Now I'm wheezing too. Antibiotics didn't help, the chest xray didn't show anything (although it was so poorly made, I don't think anybody could have seen anything on THAT chest xray, but that's another story). Whatever it is I'm having got worse right after the wharf-2-wharf. It was obviously not a good idea to run, even though I ran very slowly.

I had to scratch the half-vineman last week and this weekend I scratched the Folsom International. Both are USAT races and there is no refund and no transferring of the registration. Therefore, to add insult to injury, I'm losing a lot of money too.

Fortunately I'm not registered for any more races this year. I'm glad this is happening at the end of the race season. And it's extremely unlikely I'll be able to run a marathon in about a month. As I'm not feeling better yet, this probably means an early end for this race season. Even if I got OK over night, as I haven't done any exercise for 2 weeks I'm in bad shape too. It's quite unlikely I'll do any more races this year. And my move back to Europe (in about 3 weeks) will keep me busy anyway.

Well, I guess that's it for 2003. Despite this depressing finale it was a pretty good year: I swam Alcatraz, and in very difficult coniditions. I did my first 2.4 mile open water swim, and without a wet suit. And I had a spectactular race at SJIT. I can't complain, really. I would have really liked to do the half-IM and the marathon, because that way I would feel much more confident training for a full IM next year. The full IM now has a bit of a question mark next to it. But we'll see. With such a good 2003 under my belt, I can have high hopes for 2004.

8/18/2003 - ... or not?

One week later and I finally feel better. Much better. I'm still coughing occasionally, but I've started to do a little exercise again. (Hard to believe that I was out sick for almost a month!)

My standard procedure for any return from a situation like this: spend a week with easy swimming every day and increase distance. Well, on Saturday I swam 1000m already (in sets of 100s, I have to admit) so I decided to try a little run. 2 miles or so, very easy and flat. Good news: no wheezing or coughing. Not even the next day. That sounded promising. So I went for a slow, but hilly 5 mile run on Sunday. That was tough, but it also went well. Now I feel much more confident again! I still feel weak but I think my body is slowly recovering and now that I'm exercising again my mood is better and my overall outlook on life has improved. Which helps recoverey, as we all know. So we'll see how things progress from here. The Wachau Marathon is still out of the question, I fear, but maybe I can do a half-marathon then? And there is another marathon at the beginning of October in Graz... that's one and a half months till then... so maybe... We'll see. Stay tuned.

9/15/2003 - much later...

A month later, I'm in Austria already, and I've recovered from my jet-lag and finally I'm also starting to feel stronger and more healthy again. Of course I haven't done much training lately, but maybe schlepping boxes counts as cross training? It seemed to have helped in any case. The day before I left I was able to do a longer run of about 8 miles. It was my good-bye run in Los Gatos. One week later, I attended a little juggling festival in Krems and during that day I also did a longer run - probably around 9-10 miles. So that was a good start. I also swam a bit that week and I even was able to do a session of bikram yoga.

So, I decided to sign up for the half-marathon at the Wachau marathon after all. Of course then, the day before the actual race I felt dreadful and I planned to skip the run (also the weather was really lousy and my old foot injury bothered me). Then somebody twisted my arm into running after all. I decided to go there and decide it on the spot. The weather ended up very nice and I ended up running. Deep down I knew I would pay dearly for the run (injury) but I finished the race anyway, and I even finished it a bit faster than my first half-marathon a year earlier (1:48:21) So this was good. If I had been in really good shape I probably would have been a few minutes faster. However, I did pay for the run, indeed. My foot injury flared up again quite badly and that was about out for this season. The Wachau half-marathon was indeed the last time I went for a real run in 2003...

But the really bad news of the day was that the camera helicopter covering the race crashed into the Danube, right next to the race. Some of the lead runners from the half-marathon jumped into the river and were able to rescue everybody -- so nobody was really injured.

The next morning (today) I felt very stiff, which is to be expected after such a long run, but a few hours later my right foot started to hurt really badly and in the afternoon I was barely able to walk. I just knew I'd have to pay for that run - I just hope I didn't aggravate my injury too much and that the foot normalizes soon. In any case, after having been sick so long, a successful run like this one is a very positive experience and having started doing sport again really improved my outlook on life and vienna and everything.

Now I'm thinking about other races again after all. Who said anything of "end of season" and such nonsense? ;) There are at least 2 more possibilities for a full marathon! One in 3 weeks, the other in 6 weeks. And there are two little duatlons next weekend (unlikely) and the weekend after that...? But (I'm writing this much much later) it didn't work out that way. The half-marathon was indeed my last run of the year and it took me till january to recovery from the injury. So... that's it for 2003. Stay tuned for what's coming up in 2004 :)