Good Ride & Good Nutrition

I had a very good long ride last night on my trainer.

I had a long week with getting prepared for my sons first birthday party so most of the week was hit or miss with training.

Last night though I was determined to get my long ride in no matter what.

So, I got on my bike at 9pm and got off at midnight.  Not ideal but man it felt good on so many different levels.

Best part was that thanks to Third Coast Training's testing services my zones are dialed in.  My average power and HR were right where they were predicted and my nutrition was on point.

Right now I am trying out Infinit Nutrition (a custom formula I made) and it has done me well.  I mix thress servings of 220 calories in one bottle and sip from that for 3 hours.  I have additional water bottles to drink from as well.

For 3hr ride I took in a total of 4 bottles of water (1 containing nutrition).

Nutrition Breakdown per hour

Infinit
Calories 220
Sodium 555mg
Potassium 161mg
Carbs 52g
Protein 3g

GU Electrolyte Tabs
Calories 10
Sodium 320mg
Potassium 55mg

Total Per Hour
Calories 230
Sodium 875mg
Potassium 216mg
Carbs 52g
Protein 3g

Initial IMTX Goals

Thanks to QT2's Triathlon Calculator and confirming some caluclations using http://kreuzotter.de/english/espeed.htm below is my initial goal for IMTX.  I did add some time to the bike and the run from what the calculator said due to how extreme the conditions are on this course during the month of May.

I have been told multiple times by others and myself to not put a time goal out there but here it is anyway.

IMTX Goal Splits and Finish Time
Leg	Time
Swim	1:27:00

Bike	5:45:00

Run	4:40:00

Finish

11:52:00

Swim Day

It was swim day today and I made it to the pool.

I am super excited I did not let being tired or anything else talk be out of going to the pool this morning at 5am when my alarm sounded.

I made it to the pool did some nice sets of 200's and then found a new speed. This new speed is super slow or at least feels that way but it is controlled and seemed almost effortless.

When I looked at my clock to see my split it was under 2min/100 which if you know how bad a swimmer I am you would know that this is not a terrible time if this is the slowest I can swim.

This small tidbit along with getting to the pool to gain back some swim fitness gave me some more confidence on my road to Ironman Texas.

Knee Diagnosis

Well I posted  earlier about some pain I was dealing with on the inner portion of my left knee.  I decided to bite the bullet and see an orthopedist.

I saw the great Dr. Jensen at Athletic Orthopedics & Knee Center here in Houston. I have been seeing him since probably middle school and he has taken great care of me and my brother with all our various injuries from broken bones to ligament tears.  To make a long story short this time it is just some tendinitis at the insertion point and I was given some anti-inflammatory and told to lay off running for a week and build up slowly.

The other recommendation was to get some orthotics for my running shoes, which I will be seeing Tad Hughes of Tad Hughes Custom Studio for those.  He is also the guy who got me fit right on my Trek Speed Concept.

Fueling for Workouts and Racing

Fueling for Workouts/Races
Basics are 200-300 calories per hour consisting of 50-70grams of carbs and 300-1000+ mg of sodium.  The carbs and sodium vary because every athlete is different and also every workout is different.  A highly aerobic ride you will need less carbs as you are using less carbs.  A lighter athlete is burning less carbs than a bigger athlete.  Sodium I feel is needed more by people who sweat a lot (like myself) and in very hot races like most in Houston.

Articles on Fueling and Carbohydrates:
http://www.thirdcoasttraining.com/blog.php?s=training-race-day-fueling-strategy
http://sportsci.org/jour/0101/bmd.htm
http://www.poweringmuscles.com/article.php?id=61
http://sharepoint.worcester.edu/external/evescio/Beginner%20Tri%20Program%202007/Triathlon%20Sports%20Nutrition%20to%20Improve%20Performance.htm

I recommend 4 main products in this area EFS by First Endurance, new Roctane Drink by GU, Infinit custom make your nutrition and CarboPro.  

Articles on Sodium:
http://weshobsonperformance.com/articles/nutrition/sodium.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2492002/
http://www.slowtwitch.com/Training/General_Physiology/The_Math_of_salt_loss_1093.html
http://ironman.com/training/nutrition/electrolytes-in-the-ironman-nutrition-and-hydration-plan#axzz1kPkCv62c

With most of these you will probably need some sort of sodium supplement which I suggest Athlytes by MST and Thermotabs.  I usually do not worry about supplementing sodium during my daily training as much as I do long weekend workouts and during my races.



Recovery
This is super important and needs to be done in the 30minute window directly after your workout is completed.  I suggest something with some protein in it to help rebuild any torn down muscle tissue and some carbs to further replenish your glycogen and get you back to a normal state.

I recommend Honey Milk, Ultragen by First Endurance, Gu Recovery Brew and Fluid.

Performance Enhancement
I will not bore you with all the technical stuff but the ingredients in the following two stacks are very similar and have been shown to do a lot of cool things for endurance athletes (runners and cyclists in particular).
This is less important than the previous two but if you have the funds it is worth looking into.
1. First endurance OptygenHP and PreRace
http://www.firstendurance.com/pdf/optygenhp_2.2.pdf & http://www.firstendurance.com/pdf/pre_research_packet_1.4.pdf
Check them out on www.firstendurance.com under products and they have videos.
2. MST Cre-02, Citruvol - Ultra and Cordygen5
http://www.millenniumsport.net/

I have been on Citruvol and Cordygen5 in the past and think it had good results.  After doing some research I am adding the Cre-02 coming up very soon. I have also ordered the first endurance stuff to take immediately following the end of the MST stack to compare but again the ingredients are virtually the same and the feedback from users is amazing.



Daily Vitamins
Most of us do not have perfect diets thus need daily vitamins. I have found two dailys that focus on endurance athletes and have a lot of good feedback from triathletes and runners specifically.
First Endurance produces MultiV, Millennium Sport produces MVP and SixNutrition puts out a monthly vitamin supplement that is only for men.
http://www.firstendurance.com/pdf/multiv_research_2010.pdf
http://sixnutrition.com/
http://www.millenniumsport.net/


If you do everything above this can get quit expensive trust me I know cause I have been trying a bunch of this stuff out to be able to put out this list.  I do have deals with most of the companies above to help with the cost and any Team Apex members can take advantage of them.  IF you want something above and are not on the Team I can probably still beat retail so let me know.

Any Team Apex member who wants to come to me with a budget I can help pick and choose what is best for you.  If you have no budget go to the First Endurance website do some research and pick out almost everything they have and let me know so I can order it for you at a discount.  It is the easiest and maybe the best products out there cause they are back by tons of research (even if its their own) and are focused on endurance athletes.

Week 1 of IMTX Training

All in all it was not a bad week of training for me until I got to Sunday.  I had to switch out my long run and long bike this weekend based on life.

I like to do my long runs on Saturday so that my legs are fresher than doing them the day after a long bike.  Oh well no big deal.

So, set out to do 18miles of running with the wife as she is training for the Austin Marathon in a few weeks.  The run was going well until mile 6-7 then I started feeling something going on with me knee.  This was not a new feeling and I knew it was trouble but not wanting to let my wife down I kept going. The pain of course did not go away.  We were employing a run/walk program every mile like there were aid stations and finally around mile 10 or so the wife noticed me limping while walking.  So, we "discussed" over the next mile the smart option of my stopping the run.  Which I did :( .

This is now the second time in three weeks and the second long run in a row that I have had to stop due to this knee issue.  I have had knee issues since college and I do not know if they are cut out for long distance running. I have ran a few half marathons with the wife and have done a Half Ironman all with no knee issues but all the sudden I decide to train for an Ironman and help my wife train for a marathon and my knees have decided they wanted to age 30 years or something. Needless to say this is really bothering me because I feel my fitness is getting better but my body is not letting me do the long distance running I need to not only be successful at Ironman but even to complete the Marathon at the end of that beast.  The pain slowly comes up and then it cripples me and it is tough to even walk.  It is now Monday the day after my legs have almost zero soreness (note: my fitness is good) but my knee is still in pain.

I do not want this to be me.

I am going through the internal struggle now on how to proceed.  I am going to talk to a ortho friend of mine and seek support from my network of friends, family and coaches to try to get through.

 

First Hurdle On My Path to IMTX

Well today I hit my first hurdle on my way to Ironman Texas.

My 1 year old decided that he needed to wake up at 2am last night and with that the wife and I also woke to take care of the poor guy.  Still no clue as to what was wrong with him but better that than something actually being wrong.

With that and a couple other minor things I did not make it to the pool for my second/last pool session of the week.  I did however get in 15min using bungee cords working on dryland swim drills I got from Coach Troy see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVUBIXi5JM0&lr=1.

This is not a picture of me this morning but a pic of Conrad Stoltz the Xterra beast but this is one of the exercises I did.

I think I will start adding this more often to help with my technique and strength in the water.

So, I might not have cleared the hurdle but I also did not fall on my face. Something is always better than nothing.

I am however going to nail my interval run today to help make me feel better.

Ironman Texas Training

Ok, Ironman Texas training starts today.  I have my plan done through middle of April when I get retested at Third Coast Training and with their help reevaluate what my focus should be going forward into the race on May 19th.

I am super apprehensive and super excited all at the same time.   It is going to be an interesting journey filled with ups and downs and I hope to chronicle it all here.

Today is a scheduled rest day but since last week was vacation and I did only one run, one really good hike and walked a lot each day I will probably get in either a bike tonight or a strength session.

Time to get my diet and training consistent and on track for performance on race day.

Goals:
I am going into IMTX realistic as this is my first Ironman.  I am hoping to break the 12 hour barrier but have people telling me that through my test results I should break 11 hours.  We will see what happens as this is no easy Ironman with super hot and humid weather that saw a lot of DNFs last year.

Strength Training Continued

Strength training is going well and is helping me get back some of the size and definition I lost from the two years I have gone away from it. I also can already tell it is helping keep the nagging issues at bay by having all stabilizing muscles much stronger.

I do not have any data as to how it is equating to triathlon performance but I do know I am enjoying myself, helping reduce nagging injuries and am looking better.