Celtic Soltice 5 Miler, 9/16

Before we learned that the training would be starting in December Liz and I signed up for the Celtic Solstice 5 Miler in Baltimore. Teen had run this the past couple of years and said it was a really good race. Oh, and they have really nice custom designed long sleeve tech shirts. No that it has anything to do with signing up to run a race. Much.

I don't think I've ever run 5 miles in my life. I mean ever. I always hated running. Maybe freshman year of high school we ran 5 mile long runs for soccer practice a couple times. I was on the track team for 4 years but only for discus and shot put (and high jump for a bit). The throwers usually groused about running the mile wam-up lap that we all did. Most of our time was spent in the weight room or out in the pits practicing technique. I may have come close when I started running in college for a brief time, but I think those were mostly 3-4 miles. So 5 miles was a new one. I was kind of scared but determined to get through it. I told myself that I would treat it as two 2.25 mile runs with a break in between.

Liz, Teen, Steph and I went up to Baltimore to stay with my parents the night before. With 1800 runner registered (almost double the year before) it was probably going to be a zoo. We got down to the course aroud 8:00 and checked in. Turns out there was a shortage of shirts. By the time I picked mine up all they had were XXL. The shirt fit me, but they were different than the regular shirts. Just regular tech tees without the zip up. I was pretty bummed. Others were downright angry. No sense in making a big deal about it before running. Liz had bronchitis and decided (wisely) not to run the whole thing.

The course was pretty hilly, with a long, steady climb out for the first 1/2 mile and a sustained hill around mile 2 with gently rolling hills in between. The good part about the out and back course is that every hill you went up you also got to go down. After seeing how I did on the Turkey Trot my goal for the race was to go 55:00, so average 11 minutes miles. I still have no conception of pace, so I was going to keep time and look at my mile splits on my watch. The first mile was tough with that hill, but I hit the first mile marker at 9:41. I even bested that at mile 2 with a 9:16 split. After that I stopped looking at my watch. It wasn't going to do me any good at that point to think about my speed. Just run a decent pace without killing myself. Mile 3 marked the end of the real hills. It was good timing as I caught Liz coming up the course from her shortened run. At about 3.25 we hit the reservoir which was a fairly flat looop of about a a mile before the 1/2 long hill down to the finish. Turns out my 5K time was almost two-and-a-half minutes better than my Thanksgiving time! I was amazed at that when I reviewed my splits after the race.

Just before mile 4 I started to get winded and stopped to walk for about 45 seconds or a minute to catch my breath and get my heartrate down. I found Teen just after that and we ran around the lake together. My mile 4 split was obviously the slowest due to the walking, but still clocked in at under 10:00. Knowing that I could easily beat the time I had set for myself I didn't sprint down the final hill. My mile 5 split was around 9:30. The "official" results only have the gun time recorded (we were in the middle of the pack and took a bit to get to the starting line), but according to my stopwatch I ran 47:51. That's almost 9:30 mile pace!! If anything I'm not scared of running longer distances any more. I certainly won't be anywhere close to fast, but hopefully I'll be able to finish the 6.2 mile run come April.

Week 2

After the freezing run on Saturday, Sunday turned out to be pretty pleasant and in the mid-50s by the afternoon. I'm guessing the opportunities for long rides in comfortable weather will be pretty rare in January and February, so Steph and I went out for about an hour along the Beach Drive section of Rock Creek Park that is closed to traffic on the weekends. In order to avoid the bumpy section of trail that we took to get to Beach Drive we decided to head up to Conn Ave and back down past the zoo for the ride home. That meant riding up the hill on Tilden. Ouch. Carrying extra weight + not having strong riding legs yet + double chainring on my new bike = painful hill. Hey, at least I now have a good benchmark to track my training progress on the bike now!

Tuesday brought our second Tuesday swim clinic, and, lo and behold, the pool was opened on time. Sort of. We again arrived at 5:25 to find a bunch of folks waiting outside locked doors, but after a couple of minutes of waiting there was a literal screeching of tires as the lifeguard peeled into the lot. A few minutes later and we were in the pool. There are 6 lanes in the pool and many more swimmers than that, so we were told to divide ourselves according to speed. That was kind of a hard task since we hadn't seem each other swim before! I punted and picked lane 4 (1 was supposed to be slowest, 6 fastest). It turned out to be an OK spot for me, probably a bit too fast, but that was good. With 4 people in the lane circle swimming I had to push myself to keep pace. I'm not really liking the crowded lane thing, but hopefully as we go on the coaches will be able to give us some instruction on our strokes. This week we just swam the drills. I can't blame Mel to spending most of her time with the folks who weren't as comfortable in the water.

Since we were building up to the 5 miler on Saturday I decided to rest the run legs a bit and got into the gym for some spinning on Wednesday. After a quick run I hopped on for 20 minutes then immediately out the door to run home. We aren't doing any real brick work until January at least, but I wanted to feel what it was like to try and get your "run legs" after being on the bike. I guess 20 minutes isn't enough because it wasn't that bad.

Thursday brought another morning swim (6:30 for UDC days). It felt good with some more structure to the workouts and the drills felt a little easier. With warm-up I went for about 1900 yards (the swim at the race will be 1650 yards). That felt good. At the end during cool-down I decided to try a couple laps with no kicking at all, just working on my stroke and body position. I was faster on that lap than on my "faster" laps with a kick. So kicking seems to actually be slowing me down. Hmm. It is really is all about technique after all. Not kicking at all doesn't seem to be a good option, so hopefully one of the coaches will have some advice on a kick I could use.

Week 1

The first few weeks of the program are designed to ease everybody into the training regimen. A few 10-20 minute runs, 30 minute bike sessions, and the beginning of the organized swim clinics which will be held every Tuesday (individual swim workouts are spread over other days). There are two choices for the swim clinics: 5:30-6:30 AM, and 8:00-9:00 at night. We chose the former for the time being. I am about as far from a morning person as you can get, but if you're going to commit to something you might as well go all the way, right? Right.

Liz and I are up at 4:45 and out the door to pick up Steph at 5:05 for the short drive to the Lab School just outside of Georgetown where TNT has been holding swim clinics for a few years. We arrive at 5:30 to the sight of coaches and trainees standing outside the locked doors in the freezing cold. The lifeguard who is supposed to open the pool isn't there and we don't have a key. 10 minutes go by and some calls are made. 15 minutes. 20. Just shy of 6:00, the bad news: we won't be swimming at the Lab School today. Sorry! Getting up before 5:00 only to hear that was pretty deflating. Determined not to waste those precious hours of sleep Liz, Teen, Steph and I headed over to UDC for their 6:30 opening and get in a workout.

The rest of the week's schedule is pretty uneventful. I'm replacing the mid-week bike workouts with runs; long rides on the weekends will have to do for now. It is so much easier to head out on a short run than a short ride: getting air in the tires, hauling the bike up from the basement, riding 10-15 minutes just to find a stretch of road or pathway where you can ride without stopping. Plus it's safer to run in the dark.

Up again on Thursday morning for a 6:30 swim. Having an organized set of drills to do makes the time go by faster than just endlessly swimming laps. It also gives us some insight to what we should be developing form-wise with drills to make our stroke more streamlined and efficient and not just more powerful. All I know is that they are hard.

Saturday's Jolly Fat Man run was no set distance: you run what you feel like running. For me that turns out to be about 2 1/4 miles out then a walk back with another 1/2 mile run in there somewhere. Not bad considering it was freezing, 17 degrees at the start. That wasn't so great. I couldn't feel my fingers about a mile in. The hot chocolate and food at RiRa was nice

TNT Kickoff

The Team In Training kickoff meeting was on December 2. It was an opportunity to meet the rest of our teammates and hear more about the program goals, meet the coaches, and learn more about fundraising. Liz, Steph, and I had requested Teen as our captain. The group (all 75 of us apparently!) trains as a whole 1-2 times a week, and the team captains act as mentors for groups of 10 or so participants. With our welcome packet we received the training schedule as well, convenientky broken down into 3 different effort levels for beginners (me), experienced triathletes, and really experienced or fit triathletes. The big surprise was that the organized training was not going to begin in January but that very Tuesday. In the pool. At 5:30 in the AM. Yikes.
Since I had planned on trying to build a running base I had previously signed up for a small fun run in Bethesda with the ultimate goal of going as far as I could in the Celtic Solstice 5 Miler up in Baltimore. That means missing all of the organized Saturday group workouts until after the New Year, but it's not like we're slacking off to do it! The first Saturday was a Triathlon 101 clinic, mostly going over gear choices like shoes (check) and bike (check) and necessary swim gear (check and check). The second is going is a stretching clinic that will probably be more useful (I need help with one of my hamstrings that I probably slightly tore a few years ago and never healed completely), but the coaches helpfully post the info to the TNT message group so we're not missing everything. Luckily the first group workout we'll be able to attend will also be one I'll need the most: running technique.

"Pre-season" training

At the TNT information session we didn't receive a definitive training schedule, and we were assuming that the official season wouldn't begin until after the New Year. At least I thought I'd have time to get into some sort of shape so that the transition to 6+ workouts a week wouldn't kill me. It's not as if I was super strong in one of the disciplines to begin with, so I was really starting from scratch.

• Swimming: I've always been comfortable in the water. 0.92 miles isn't exactly a comfort distance, though. Free community pools are unfortunately a rarity in D.C. The most convenient to home would be the YMCA, but it's expensive and the pool is perpetually crowded. The University of D.C. is short ride away on the Metro, is free for D.C. residents, and isn't well known. The schedule is pretty good for mornings and afternoon, and most of the time it isn't that crowded.
  
  My first time back in the water was about how I thought it would go: terribly. I couldn't even go 50 yards (one lap) freestyle without getting winded and stopping for air. Form? Who needs form?! I was about as un-hydrodynamic as you could get, a mess of flailing limbs full of turbulence and fury, signifying nothing.


• Biking: Out of the three I figured I was best off on the bike. I had commuted from Alexandria into the city when I lived down there, so longish rides weren't foreign to me, but that was on my heavy commuter bike. Moving up to a proper road bike should make it even better. One of the fun parts about training for a triathlon is that you get to pick up new toys. Specifically, a sweet new ride:
  
  
  Getting a professional fitting made all the difference. I was a little worried about using clipless pedals with my road shoes, but I haven't fallen on my ass. Yet.
  


• Running: Ugh. Running. Jogging. I've always hated it. My frame just wasn't made for long distance pounding. Sore knees and ankles were normal, and the extra weight I'm carrying doesn't help. I started off easy, going for 10 minutes at a time when I could. 3/4 mile. 1 mile. I was still plodding along (plodding being the operative word here), but I was able to at least put some distances together. But I have no sense of pace, so I tend to jump out going way too fast and wear myself out within minutes. After I started figuring out distances from our front door (thank you GMaps Pedometer!) I began timing myself. Yeah, sprinting out of the gate doesn't help. I should have been doing slow runs (12 minute miles I figured based on what I had read), but I was getting out to 8 or 9 minute mile paces and just burning out before the mile was out. Sprint then walk, sprint then walk. It was hard to slow myself down since in the back of my head I knew that faster pace = shorter time I had to suffer on the run. The opposite was actually true.
  
  
  After a couple weeks of that Liz and I made the bold decision to run a 5K Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. I don't think I'd run more than 3 miles since my college days. Early in my college days. I told myself that a 12 minute pace would be great if I could run the whole way without stopping. 35 minutes total and I would be thrilled. It was a fairly hilly course, a couple short and steep ones at the very beginning. According to the race volunteers calling out times at the mile markers I had an 11:07 first mile split. Adrenaline, I guess. 2nd mile had some more downhill, and I clocked in at 9:58! The last mile.1 featured a long hill and I had to walk for two 10-20 second breaks. After cresting the hill I found what might actually resemble a stride (shock!) and finished the course in 32:06. 10:22 pace. Not bad! I really surprised myself, not just at my time but by actually enjoying a run. It was really excrutiating at the end (and my back had tightened up painfully from the pounding the week before), but for the first time in over a dozen years I actually had some confidence in my running. Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad after all.
  

Calm before the storm

Liz and Teen had been on me to join up for Team In Training ever since Liz decided to do it after her sprint triathlon in August. I didn't actually make the decision until attending an information session in early November. TNT staff, coaches, and team captains made presentations about the marathon and triathlete programs followed by a short speech by a blood cancer survivor and TNT participant. That's when the decision was made. Signed, sealed, delivered. I even got to take home a tshirt. Woo hoo. Now what?

And so it begins

The triathlon training, that is. Actually it began a couple weeks ago. I'll catch up in this space when I have time. The short version? It's not as bad as I had anticipated. The good? Running hasn't as mind-numbingly brutal as I had always thought, but that doesn't change the fact that I am slow as dirt. The bad? Getting back in the pool and feeling like I was making as much progress as one of those wind up scuba divers. More details to come.