Say goodbye to 2020

Here we are, the last day of a year to forget. This time last year Pattie and I were celebrating the new year just as we have been for nearly forty years, at our friend Dr. Ric Trimillos’s condo in Waikiki watching the fireworks light up the sky. This year we will be doing the exact same thing, except we will be the only guests. The usual crowd will tune in on Zoom. That pretty much defines 2020.

This year began with what felt like an endless decent into chaos. I hope you join me in wanting to make 2021 the climb out of the abyss. Notice I said "to make" and not "will be." We each have a role to play in creating happiness.

I consider myself very fortunate in how little the pandemic has affected me. I’m still alive (yea!). I never got sick. I still have a job, although I sometimes work from home. Many people have not been so fortunate.

There is one thing I miss a lot. Playing in the U.H. Gamelan Ensemble. The music, and the social life. But it will still be there next year, or the one after that, just as if I had spent a couple of years studying abroad.

As for my athletic pursuits, after a precipitous nose dive during winter I managed to pull out and achieve some worthwhile goals. In July I started to participate in Ironman VR races, culminating in completing an Ironman 70.3 in August. I had been training as if I were doing Kona, and was delighted when the Ironman organization decided to honor what is known as Kona week -- the week leading up to the World Championship -- with a full Ironman virtual race. The fact that I did it just goes to show what can happen when we don’t act our age.

While all that was going on I decided to become a coach. I set up my website, I got my state excise tax licence, and I completed USA Triathlon Level 1 certification. I am putting off ordering a custom kit until I have a few paying customers. All in good time.

This was a year to deal with a couple of health issues. I got my heart fixed up so it does not freak out on long runs, and I got special glasses that fixed my double vision problem. My active side is so much happier. If only I could do something about my skin.

So far my 2021 plan looks exactly like how 2020 ended up. Training for Ironman 70.3 Hawaii in June, and Kona in October. I predict both will be virtual, if anything. I keep getting this romantic notion (call it a crazy idea) to reproduce the original Ironman course. (The first three Ironman races were held on Oahu before moving to Hawaii Island.) There are a lot of reasons not to do that, but it is fun not to act our age.

I have been and will continue to use my training as an experiment in how to train as a senior athlete. I rely heavily on the work of Joe Friel, in particular his groundbreaking book Fast After 50, but recently have uncovered a small but energetic women’s movement devoted to the same topic. Dr. Stacy Sims in particular is doing really useful work in this area. The way I look at it, I plan to coach senior men and women, so the more I know about women the better. As Stacy puts it, women are not small men.

What else happened in 2020? Oh yeah, I grew a beard. If we call it a COVID beard I will have to shave it off someday, so let’s just call it what it is, hair that still grows.

2021 - Normal, or Not?

 The winter surge in COVID-19 cases predicted by experts is here. The statistics are mind numbing. On the bright side we have one vaccine shipping and more on the way. But having a vaccine is not the same as ending the pandemic. For things to return to anything approaching normal will require 75-80% of the population to be vaccinated.

What exactly does "population" mean? For most Americans it means the people in their community. The places they visit as they go about their daily routine. If a community reaches 80% immunity the virus has little chance of survival. If, say, a stranger came to town who was infected (apologies to Tolstoy), the odds of coming into contact with someone who was not immune are reasonably low. Sad to say, if that did happen it would be someone who chose not to get the vaccine, and justice will be served, one way or another. The point is, with 80% immunity the infection is unlikely to spread. Compare this to building a fire in a backyard barbecue. Done right, the fire is unlikely to spread. What we have now, as I write this, is an out of control wildfire, and it is going to remain a raging inferno for quite some time.

If having a vaccine makes you optimistic, I have some bad news. Every year thousands of Americans die from the common flu. Most of them could have avoided death by getting a flu shot. Many more would never even get sick. Why does this happen? Because only about 40% of Americans get a flu shot.

When the polio vaccine was created people went all out to get themselves and their children vaccinated. Due to this remarkable effort we have virtually eliminated polio, not just in America but around the world. The same is true of smallpox. 

That's great, but what about measles? We were just at the point where it was gone when some ill-informed people began spreading erroneous information about the side effects of the measles vaccine. Frightened mothers decided not to vaccinate their children, and what happened? The virus took off again. It is still running around.

With COVID we have a new challenge. Politics. Even setting aside the crazy hyperbole surrounding the pandemic and subsequent vaccine -- created by radical left-wing technologists to insert microchips to control the world, etc. -- it is clear that to many people, getting the vaccine conflicts with their conservative position. A Texas doctor interviewed on NPR recently reported doing an informal interview at his hospital and found that only half of the nurses planned on getting vaccinated. 

My point in all this is that I do not anticipate a return to racing in 2021. I see where some IM races have already been held, even as the fall surge was underway. I consider that reckless. Now that the virus is totally out of control I cannot imagine any municipality allowing a race to go on. Maybe, with a lot of luck, things will improve enough by summer to allow groups going out to dinner and family vacations. Even small, local races might -- and I stress might -- go off much like they used to. But a big race, like an Ironman or a major marathon, where thousands of people descend upon a small community. I just do not see how that would be safe.

So where does that leave us? I see two paths. Remain on a marking time routine, or train for races that will not happen. And, for the second option, doing the race yourself. 2020 was the year of virtual racing, and we should expect no less in 2021.

TrainingPeaks has many articles on coping with the pandemic (here is a list). Philip Hatzis and others make the point that this is not the time to train hard, because there is evidence that hard training weakens the immune system and increases the risk of upper respiratory tract infection. Another way of looking at it is to take advantage of the lack of racing to focus more on aerobic threshold development, the long, low intensity stuff.

When I take into account what Joe Friel recommends in Fast After 50 I see good balance between high and low intensity. He argues that masters athletes too often fall into a routine of only doing LSD (Long, Slow, Distance) work, with the result of a steadily declining capacity. Why is that? I cannot repeat everything he writes about here, but to summarize, as we age our hormone levels drop -- testosterone for men and estrogen for women. That leads to a loss of muscle mass and a tendency to convert more of what we eat into fat. The skinny legs fat belly syndrome. Including some high intensity interval work will slow the decline in the efficiency of our energy systems, and lifting weights -- we are talking low rep high load efforts here -- will maintain bone health and trigger hormone production. We may not be able to perform as well as we did when we were twenty, but we do not need to sit and watch the world pass by, either.

To me it sounds like we have two choices. Throttle back and hold in place to protect our immune system, or keep going with a balanced approach to slow the aging process. Being an old guy specializing in coaching old guys and gals, I like the second option.

By the way, if you prefer plan A, hold in place, Joe Friel put out a terrific training plan for just this purpose. Available on TrainingPeaks and very reasonably priced ($10), it is a four week plan designed to be repeated indefinitely. It won't get you to the podium at your next Ironman, but it will keep you going until things return to normal. If you are under 50 (40 for women) I recommend this plan.

Since I am just getting started as a coach I am using this opportunity to hone my training plan writing skills. I mostly have the basics down. What messes me up are the little details. I tend to prescribe too much work and not enough recovery time. 

I have given myself two A race goals, corresponding to Ironman 70.3 Hawaii (Honu), usually held on the first Saturday in June, and Ironman Kona in October. Pretty much the same thing I did last year. We were so shut down last spring that I did not do a Honu race simulation. Later on I started to do some of the Ironman VR series. I did do the full Ironman VR Kona in October, but, as allowed by the rules, I did the events on separate dates with one or two rest days in between. My goal for 2021 is to do both races as single day solo efforts. Let's save the debate on which is harder, all in one day or spread out over multiple days. What I can say for sure is that route planning and support will be a big challenge.

More about that in future posts. My Honu training plan starts in three weeks.

Thoughts on workout goals

 

The COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench into everyone's plans. A lot of things were simply postponed, including Ironman races around the world. Some were moved on-line. The annual TrainingPeaks Coaching Summit is a good example. In the past it was a week-long live event held in a different location each year. For 2020 it is on-line and free. If you coach long course triathlon, or are self coached, or thinking about it, check it out.

One adaptation that has become increasingly popular are virtual races. When the Ironman VR series was announced I dabbled with it, then decided my training style did not revolve around doing a race every weekend so I gave it up. Next thing I knew, a couple of friends were doing them, and I got hooked on the idea of doing a virtual half Ironman. Along came a hurricane that was supposed to flatten Oahu the weekend of that first HIM, so I had to wait a month. 

Way back before COVID was a thing I decided not to do Honu because of the cost, but I decided to keep following my training plan. Then, as previously noted, I started looking to the vision and heart issues I have been struggling with for years, only to discover that, yes, I had some very real problems, but they are correctable. 

Honu falls in early June. My vision issue had cut severely into my long run progression so I decided to push my target race further to the right. I decided to train as if I were doing Ironman Kona. Why not? Everything was upside down. I needed a goal, and this was crazy enough to hold my interest. I have had a blast doing this, and have learned a lot along the way.

Somewhere along there I decided to become a coach. There was a lot to do. Website, social media, certification. On that last item and speaking of moving on-line, USA Triathlon used to require a live week-long training course and regardless of where they held it the transportation cost to me made it impossible. Due to the pandemic they have moved everything on-line, and have done a remarkable job given how fast they had to get it done. I just finished the on-line course yesterday. All that is left are a few formalities and I will have my certification. 

Having decided I wanted to be a coach I realized it was time to get my act together regarding what I would do as a coach. I see myself working with senior athletes who need a little help translating all the wild and crazy stuff they are bombarded with on-line into actionable plans that take into account the special needs of the senior athlete. 

Remember that Ironman VR series? I was still high-fiving myself for having finished the half Ironman when they announced -- out of the clear blue -- that they will host a full virtual Kona race. Like all of their previous races the event is spread over multiple days, except instead of three days we get an entire week, the same dates as the week leading up to the original Kona race in October. At first this sounds a lot easier, but let me tell you from experience that doing your own private race on open roads without support is tough. No police directing traffic, no aid stations, no cones, no signs, no cheering fans, no medical tent. Maybe it is not as tough as a one day race, but believe me, it is no picnic.

I plan on going into more detail about that race in a later post. For now I want to fall back to the underlying philosophy that guides my planning. Most of it is culled from Joe Friel's fantastic book, Fast After 50, which I have mentioned many times in this blog. Friel does a wonderful job making a case for why we need to do these things, along with commentary from other experts. I am going to leave that with him. Please, if you have any interest in that, buy his book. It is priceless.

Friel makes a good case that as we age we gravitate towards long duration, low intensity training. It feels good, and it is a better fit with social activity. While this is happening the aging process slowly erodes our ability to perform. There are aspects of aging that are visible: the loss of muscle mass in our arms and legs, an increase in belly fat, dry, wrinkled skin, graying or loss of hair, just to name a few. But there are changes to our metabolic systems that are more insidious in that we do not see them happening until we try to run a local 10K and wonder when we lost our ability to run.

Friel goes on to lay out in clear, easy to understand terms the generic building blocks from which a training plan can be constructed. It's like a box of Lego -- all the pieces are there, what is absent is a finished design. Follow his instructions and you will end up with your very own training plan. Well, it helps to know something about how athletes in any given sport train, and about periodization.

Here are the essential activities.

Aerobic Capacity

Best done as short intervals at or near maximum effort, separated by recoveries of equally short duration. These target the cardio vascular system, especially its ability to process oxygen. The benefits from work done on the bike carry over for the run, as since doing such high intensity efforts is much safer on the bike on a turbo trainer, that is how these should be done. Apparently this overlap does not work for swimming, but in my experience only the very best age group triathletes are limited by aerobic capacity.

Lactate Threshold

These workouts improve the body's ability to process fuel efficiently, using work intervals of moderate length separated by recoveries that are much shorter than the work interval. The benefits are specific to the activity, so these should be done on the bike and the run, and in the water for advanced swimmers.

Aerobic Threshold

These are similar to the workouts a typical senior athlete gravitates to, with one important difference. Most athletes do these too hard. This is especially true of group runs and rides. Unlike the high intensity stuff, these are not done as intervals; simple, long and slow is what is needed.

Strength Training

Recall what I said about aging and muscle mass? The best defense to loss of muscle is strength training. Moving heavy weights. The be useful this must be done with case. Too little and the desired response will not happen. Too much and an over-use injury will set back your progress. The goal is not body building in the traditional sense. The goal, rather, is to be lean and strong, with enhanced range of motion.

These activities are more or less relevant at various times over the course of a complete training program. The help with that Friel uses a concept of dose. For example, early in a training plan we may want to emphasize aerobic capacity development, so we assign those workouts at a high dose. To compensate we might assign aerobic threshold workouts at low dose.

Another critical component to manage is recovery. This will always be true regardless of the athlete's age, but as we run past fifty we find it takes longer to recover. To be clear, we can do the work. We just need a little more time before we can do it again.

This is where training plan design gets interesting. The goal should be to identify and focus on the athlete's weaknesses -- Friel calls them limiters -- early in the season, then gradually move into a workout balance that best supports the target A race, all the while managing training stress much more tightly than for younger athletes.

So, what do we do when there is no A race? That is the question that has plagued many of my fellow athletes.

One solution is to go into a sustaining mode. Several coaches have training plans designed with that in mind. Even Friel did one specifically for athletes under pandemic restrictions, and it only costs $10.00. That's a great deal. I chose instead to train as though I had an Ironman race. The pools were closed, but for most of this spring and summer the oceans were open, so I moved all my swim workouts to open water. The point here is, I never dreamed I would actually do an Ironman this year, but I trained for it anyway and had a great time.

When I began this project I was not thinking about becoming a coach. I would say that it was going though the process of developing my own training plan that allowed me to see what was possible. 

Perhaps there is something that you have always been interested in. Jump in, explore, learn all that you can. You too may find a new calling. At the very least, have fun.

What exactly does "relaxed" mean?

A few weeks ago I posted this question in a Facebook group devoted to triathlon coaching:

I was on my TT bike doing a turbo session and found myself studying what muscles I was using to hold aero position. Hold with the back? Hold with the chest? Relax as much as possible? Stay stiff like in plank position? Then I realized I have never seen any discussion about this, just get out and ride. That and get a bike fit. Is there a "Everything you wanted to know about riding aero but were afraid to ask?" I cannot say it comes naturally.

My post generated some interest, but little advice. Someone said to not use back muscles, rather use core. I find "core" to mean different things to different people. To many it means the abdominal muscles, i.e., the belly. 

The group was started by someone I think of as a good friend even though we have never met -- Suzanne Atkinson. She replied, "The posterior muscle group is just as important as the other muscle groups in all things tri including aero position. So the back is important, as is the core."

(Posterior means towards the back. In this case, the muscles on the backside of the body. In particular the calves, hamstrings, gluteus maximi, latissimus dorsi and the erector spinae.)

Having nothing better to do I happened to be looking back through Going Long, by Joe Friel and Gordon Byrn, and came across some relevant material in the chapter called Training for the Bike. The first passage is from the section on developing pedaling economy: 

There are two keys to improved economy. One is to refine the movements that take place at the top and bottom of the stroke, when the leg must shift from "up and back" to "forward and down," with the reverse situation at the bottom of the stroke. At the top of the stroke, the foot should feel as if it is pushing forward in the shoe. At the bottom, you should get the sense that mud is being scraped from the show.

The other key is to focus on the relaxation part of the pedal stroke. Tensing more muscles than are needed to apply force to the pedals is wasteful and uneconomical. Start with the muscles you have the most control over -- the face and fingers. Once you can relax them, try relaxing your calves and toes while spinning. The idea is to activate only the muscles needed when they're needed. No more, no less.

The next is from the section on developing cycling skills, specifically a fast cadence spin-up drill.

The key to this drill is relaxation. Relax your toes, your grip on the bars, and your face. Make it seem almost effortless.

These are just a few of the many times I have seen relaxation described as essential to success, nowhere more than swimming. I chose these passages because they relate specifically to my question about cycling.

Not long ago I purchased a book on triathlon (TT) bike fitting by a regular in another forum. In fact, I believe he created it. The Misfits Guide to Basement Bike Fitting, by David Luscan. A major theme of the book is that our body is capable of working efficiently all by itself. The key is to get our over-active mind out of the way. 

Here is something Dave wrote about posture, specifically when settling into the aero position:

[The rotation of our body] is centered around the hips, and the technical term is anterior pelvic rotation ... We don't slide to move forward, we roll. Then we relax. Like a drunk slumped over a bar, we want to forget everything we think we know about proper posture, and literally slouch down into the bars.

Colorful, and evocative. Later on in a section on the cockpit he writes:

This fundamental fit coordinate is the straight line distance from the tip of the saddle to the middle of the back of the elbow pads, and it is the primary driver of comfort on the bike. Too long or too short and we end up using too much muscle for support. Just right and we can execute postural directive #2 -- Relax.

I never did find any more postural directives from Dave, but that's OK. The key here is how these two passages connect through relaxation.

A yoga instructor once said that I could go further into a stretch only my muscles don't allow it. That if I were unconscious I could, for example, touch my toes. That image and the drunk slumped over the bar called up the movie Weekend at Bernie's. I am quite certain that if we put Bernie on a TT bike in aero position he would fall off. Even if we tied his wrists to the aero bars and his feet to the pedals.

Yesterday I rode the bike portion of an Ironman VR 70.3. By far the longest I have ridden this season, especially without a cafe stop along the way. I have made many improvements. I can see. A new and better saddle. Raised and shortened aero bar position. I would not go so far as to say I was comfy out there, but it was my best ride in a long time. 

As the hours ticked slowly by I found my thoughts returning to this question, again and again. Relax, but not so much I lose control of the bike. Where I ended up is best described by Friel, "The idea is to activate only the muscles needed when they're needed. No more, no less." He was writing about pedaling, but his words apply to, well, everything. 

That is what I call relaxed. Yes, we do use muscles to hold our position. A great many. But the key is to use the least amount possible, to feel as if you are not using any.

Virtual fun

Everyone is impacted one way or another by this pandemic. I am grateful for not having lost any close friends or family to it. And, I am grateful for a job that is considered essential and can be performed from home. I do have friends less fortunate it that respect. The changes in how we conduct our business demanded new application of IT capabilities, and that has had me running hard and fast to keep up and provide the best service possible. A year ago, who ever heard of Zoom? Microsoft Teams? Now, everyone I support has a headset and a webcam.

It is in my personal life that I feel the strongest negative impact from this pandemic. The loss of weekly gamelan practice and any hope of racing. I confess I have done absolutely nothing related to gamelan. I know I should. Review my notes. Browse YouTube. I have no desire to do that. Why, I cannot say. All I can think of is that my enjoyment came from doing. Not solo, either; in a group.

That I miss racing comes as a surprise. For a long time I felt like I did not belong. I had the audacity to show up Sunday morning and line up with people who have been doing this for years. People who can actually swim. Somewhere along the way I got over that without knowing it. I see myself as much a triathlete as I do a musician. It is not about being at the front, or being the best. It is what I do. That is all there is to it. It is what I do. Not who I am. What I do.

There is one thing that has filled some of the emptiness. Virtual racing. As we became acclimated to the restrictions imposed by this pandemic, more and more organizations turned to this format. It took me awhile to catch the bug, but once I got into it I must admit it adds a level of satisfaction that I missed.

This weekend I am taking on a real challenge, the Ironman VR 70.3. Because so many people lack access to pools, and a way to document results, the swim is replaced by a run. So it is a run - bike - run, all outdoors on the road. To simplify safety and support, participants are allowed to do the three events in any order, wherever they want and whenever they want over a bit more than a weekend. I plan to to the bike on Friday, which happens to be a holiday, the short run Saturday, and the long run on Sunday. I do miss the other athletes and the cheering onlookers, but not the sign the reads "Remember, you paid for this." Actually, the IM VR races are free. If you want some finisher's swag you can buy it. I already ordered my Olympic distance swag.

The training I have been following since last winter is my home brew Ironman plan, based on the concepts presented in Joe Friel's Fast After 50 and Going Long, co-written with Gordon Byrn. Not to mention Friel's Training Bible. The plan is designed as if I were racing Kona, so doing a half this weekend is about right as a practice race.

I was seriously (not) considering cobbling together some kind of event to take the place of the October race. I know some crazy people who have done that sort of thing. Chet the Jet for one. And there is Addy and Irene and their mega bike ride weekends. Then along comes the cancellation of the Honolulu Century ride, which I expected, and in its place the virtual Ride of the Century. Fool that I am I signed up to ride 100 miles and my intention is to do it on my TT bike, as though it were a race. Does that mean I should get up the next day and run a marathon?

The eyes have it

I was looking back over my posts and was surprised to see I have not updated my vision situation. The last time I wrote, back in February, I was trying a new set of contacts. A lot has happened since then.

For a week or so I was really excited. I loved the expansive field of vision. I was so pleased with the first rides and runs that I went right out and purchased new readers for working at the computer and plain, uncorrected swim goggles. Then on a longish ride the double vision returned, and as the days went by and my wear time increased, my vision got worse. I tried two different kinds of eye drops. No good. Finally I went back to my optometrist to get checked and he noticed that the lenses were not aligning correctly. No wonder my vision was so bad.

Fortunately some friends suggested I see an ophthalmologist. I got a referral from my GP and just got in for an exam before the COVID-19 lock-down went into effect. His diagnosis: double vision, probably correctable with prism lenses. Contacts were not an option. But he wanted me to see the expert over at Straub, and they were not taking new cases due to the lock-down. 

After what felt like an eternity I got in to see the guy at Straub, and he confirmed the prism thing. The really cool part was he has an optician downstairs who will add a stick-on prism to normal glasses. Look closely at the pic below and you can just make out a series of horizontal lines that cover the full lens.

After getting this stick-on I was amazed at how much better I could see on the bike. Not only was the old double vision daemon expunged, everything looked clearer. Simply amazing. Last Sunday Pattie and I rode Haleiwa and I never had to close one eye to see the road on the decent. I was flying down Pineapple Hill (Hwy 99) at 35 m.p.h. on the TT bike with total confidence.

The stick-on is only a temporary test. This week I went back to the optician to order real glasses. I decided to get what I have now and see how that works, because the real glasses use a different kind of prism. Apparently the correction will be optimal in the center of the lens and diminishing towards the edges. Since I look out through the top edge while in the aero position this may not work. If it does, the next step is to try the same thing with my Rudy Project glasses.

I cannot say enough how great it is to see two cars up ahead and know there really are two cars, and not have to choose which white line to follow.

Can you say Supraventricular Tachycardia?

In a previous post I shared my growing frustration with my heart. I am not referring to romance, nor am I dreaming up titles for a country western song. To recap, every once in a while my heart rate goes really high. I notice it most often while running, but sometimes it happens on the bike. Never during normal activity. Right after that last post I went to my GP. He insisted there is nothing wrong with me, but since, in his words, "This is the third time I have complained about it" he decided it was time to refer me to a cardiologist.

Talk about luck. I keep hearing stories about doctors who do not understand the active lifestyle, whose advice is often to slow down and just accept the fact you are getting old. This cardiologist was a serious runner and understood completely what I was describing because he had it himself.

Diagnosis is not a 100% sure thing. As is so often the case we treat what we think is most likely going on, and if things don't improve we move on down the list of possibilities. What makes supra whatchamacallit -- SVT -- hard to diagnose it it only happens on rare occasions. Naturally the good Doc ran an EKG during my examination, and it looked perfectly normal. 

This is when I got the first good news. A company named AliveCor makes a portable EKG device called Kardia that connects to your smartphone with Bluetooth. The Doc said to carry it with me on every run and bike, and when I have an episode, pull over and record. I then mail him the file and he can confirm the diagnosis. I paid a little extra for a nice carrying case. The whole thing weights about 50 cents.

 

Then I got the second piece of good news. I have high blood pressure. Nothing much but given my family history I need to take reasonable precautions. The cardiologist saw that I was taking a calcium channel blocker, and one treatment of SVT is a similar but different medication. So we switched. If it works, I will never have another episode of SVT. Which means I will never get to use my new toy. If it does not work, there is a simple surgical procedure.

Naturally the next day after I started the new meds I felt like superman. Amazing what a little confidence boost can do.

My body is speaking. Am I listening? (updated)

Updated, see end of entry.

It's Saturday morning. I should be just finishing my long run. Instead I am sitting at home, checking Facebook and, now, writing this. What happened?

Am I sick? No. No fever, no sore throat, no runny nose. But I know things are not right. 

Yesterday afternoon I did an easy bike ride, just to see how my new glasses work. Good news! No double vision. But within minutes of starting my HR went into zone 6, at what I would consider my absolute max HR. I was not working hard. I was not breathing hard. I was wearing a tri kit rather than the usual bike jersey, which features a snug fitting fabric with lots of Lycra. I recalled Garmin had an issue with "tech" fabrics a few years ago, but I thought they fixed that. Besides, I have used this top before, many times, without any problems. I pulled over and without taking the strap off used water from my bottle to wet the pads again. No change. I checked my FR935. Same reading. Then I realized it was taking the signal from the strap, not the built-in optical sensor. I decided to continue my ride and toss out the HR data on TrainingPeaks.

I did notice I felt unusually tired on uphill sections. I was only roaming around Kahala, not wanting to brave the highway until I knew my eyes were okay. I didn't give it a second thought, only that this my first time riding on the road on my tri bike since February, it was a rest day and I wanted to save my strength for Saturday's long run. No other worrisome signs. No dizziness, no out of breath feeling. I was fascinated at how well I could see.

This morning I woke up feeling fine. Every morning I do an HRV reading using my phone and the HRV4 Training app, followed by a weigh-in. This morning was a repeat of the previous two or three. The app did not like the data it was getting, and I could see long gaps between sections of normal looking pulse. I have seen that before, and my cardiologist pointed this out on my EKG. It didn't bother him, so why worry? My typical HRV baseline runs around 7. Due to the recent outlier readings my baseline is now at 7.7 and this morning I got 11. A huge outlier. No significant change in HR during these morning tests.

HRV

Heart Rate

I mentioned I try to step on the scale after taking my HRV reading. I use a Withings because it uploads automatically to TrainingPeaks. I don't always take the time, but when I did this week I got more weird results, a five pound spike yesterday morning. That has to be mostly water retention. I have seen on occasion a swing of two or three pounds, typically after a hard day, but never this much. I think this is noteworthy.

From the very start of this morning's run I was on the lookout for more strap issues, and sure enough. I was just starting when my HR red lined, right after my usual warm-up routine. I decided to go with the optical sensor in the watch. Back to the car, take off the strap, walk away and wait for the watch to let go of the link and start using the built-in. HR looked OK, so off I went (data chart below). 

I always do a ten minute brisk walk in power zone one before actually running. As soon as I started running my HR started to climb. I was looking at power, watching as my legs transitioned from stomping to something lighter and more graceful I struggle with this. Then I started to feel tired, as if I were running tempo. I switched to HR display and sure enough I was at tempo, and climbing. I decided to walk a bit until it settled down, thinking I had started too hard. As you can see from the top line on the graph, it did not go down.

At this point I had learned two things. My HRM strap was not at fault, and my high HR was not due to starting too hard. It had to be something else, but what? I decided I might as well abandon the workout so I turned around and walked back to the car. As I approached my starting point on the highway I decided to collect more data. I stood in the shade to see if my HR would come down. It did. Then I began walking again, so see what would happen. It shot right back up and in less than two minutes was right up there where it had been, way above my LTHR, way above my 5 min HR. Again, nothing else matched, respiration very comfortable. Back at the car I sat and waited for HR to come down, and it did, until the mid 80s, at which point it leveled off.

I always get a laugh when TrainingPeaks sees this kind of data. I got a new threshold HR, and set a bunch of year's best. Fortunately those honors are withdrawn when I delete the HR track, which I did. 170 bpm? Never in my entire life.

The usual application of HRV has it that the higher the number, the less fatigue, go out and kill it. When HRV trends low it is time to reduce training load. I think my poor quality readings and off the chart values are caused my an irregular heart beat, making this HRV data useless, if not counter productive.

As I was working on this it came to me to check my BP. I was doing this every morning a few weeks ago when I started having a little vertigo -- nothing new for me. I was averaging 128/74. Today, it was much lower, 118/67. Cause, or effect? Seems to me that if my heart is not getting a smooth, deep, full stroke it will be beating faster to keep the blood moving, and pressure will be lower. Maybe not so much faster as noisier, so my Garmin interprets the noise as a fast heart rate. But I am no cardiologist, and I take comfort in knowing that I passed a treadmill stress test a couple months ago with flying colors. No obstruction. Nothing to worry about.

I thought that maybe the spin class we did on Thursday was the culprit, but now I am not so sure. The TSS rating for that workout was well below average and it did not feel all that stressful. In looking over my week I do not see anything out of the ordinary. I did mess things up two weeks ago and did not run as much as I should have, but that does not explain this.

Sleep has been normal. Seven to eight hours a night. No travel, noting special other than the boredom of not going anywhere.

For now I am treating this as a response to excessive stress, and treating it with two or three days off. I would like to do the Sunday ride in Waikiki, when Kalakaua will be closed. That will be, literally, a ride in the park.

Update 6/15

The Sunday bike was absolutely normal. Of course I kept an eye on my head unit. Most of the ride was very easy, but then most of last Friday's ride was the same. There was one time when two of us got dropped due to traffic and we rode hard to catch on. No spike, hardly a bump. Min/Avg/Max for the ride was 72/89/108, and 108 is smack in the middle of my zone 2.

This morning added more data and confusion. HRV was normal. BP was a little high but normal for me. Over the weekend it was a great number but below average for me.

Sat 118/67

Sun 119/76

Mon 131/78

No swim this morning due to box jellyfish so I did my usual walk. I live on a hill so it is more than just a walk. I started up and in thirty seconds my HR was in the red at 150. I turned around and started back down, and noticed that unlike Saturday's run my HR was coming down. I walked down some more, then turned around to head back up and it was 120. I expected it to shoot up again when I started climbing, but no. It kept going down. Five minutes in it was 116, ten minutes in it was 112, and at the top of the climb at sixteen minutes in it was 108. That's right. The entire time I was walking hard uphill my HR was falling, and I felt fine.

This is starting to sound more and more like an adrenal response issue. I am going to keep an eye on this, but at the same time I don't want to worry too much about it. My heart and body are strong. I have no symptoms associated with heart failure such as chest pain or shortness of breath. I actually feel great. I am going to call my GP and describe what has been going on, and see what he has to say. I'm the athlete, and the coach, but he is the doctor. We each have our role to play.

One thing leads to another

All three of the activities that comprise triathlon involve balance. Transition too, if you count standing on one foot. What makes swimming different from the others is the lack of contact with the ground. Floating in water, your body can be going in any direction. The only thing that keeps you level is balance. 

Terry Laughlin identified three major components of swimming: Balance, Streamlining, and Propulsion. I put balance first, because without good balance the other two suffer.

Every sport requires practice, and none more so than swimming. To emphasize this point Laughlin borrowed a term from yoga, mindful practice. In Total Immersion swimming we do not just swim laps. We constantly scan our body to root out problems, then set focal points to address them and monitor the results. 

This process is on-going and without end. Laughlin borrowed another term to describe this habit of continuous improvement, the Japanese word kaizen (kai = change, zen = good). To me this does not mean change is good so much as that improvement requires change. Why does this require special terminology? Because to change what we are invested in is scary.

Currently I set aside my Monday swim as drill day. A time to reflect on what was not going well on the weekend long swim, and address it with short, focused lengths of twenty or thirty yards. Lately I have been focused on balance. Saturday’s swim exposed a flaw I have felt before, where my feet swing side to side in a “U” shape. I must have spent a good fifteen minutes this morning focused on my legs, my kick, my quads and abs engagement. I felt improvement, but it was fleeting.

For some reason my lack of progress triggered a memory. The great running coach Bobby McGee was talking about gait issues and pointed out that often the cause of a movement issue in the legs is caused by something not right in the upper body. I recall he used the phrase “look further up the kinetic chain.” I realized that just maybe my legs are swinging around in response to what is going on above my waist.

The first place I looked was my head position. Sure enough, I was lifting. Not a lot, but even a little will cause your legs to sink. Next my arms, and sure enough, my elbows were not bent enough during recovery and my right arm was entering the water too far from my center line. What about rotation? Yep, over rotating to the right, trying desperately to balance that arm flailing around.

As soon as I got my elbow at a right angle the entry point was easy to correct. I worked on rotation by breathing every four strokes. On the cycle when I did not breath I paid close attention to where my shoulder ended up, then made sure it went no further during the breath. Of course it did, just like a kid told not to eat any cookies. But I sensed improvement and a significant reduction in leg swing.

On my website I talk about getting started with Total Immersion swimming. Like anything worth doing there is a skill set involved, and with it a specialized vocabulary. Eventually you reach a point where you no longer need structured workouts. Learn to feel what your body is doing, pick a focal point that should address the issue, and practice.

I notice that swimmers at the beach like to go long. For triathlon training there should be one long swim per week. Biking and running demand their own time, so it is hard to fit in more than three swims a week. The issue is not just time, but fatigue, and the older you are, the greater the challenge. I have those other two swim workouts focused on a particular aspect of swimming, and break the session into multiple short segments. Swim a bit, notice what needs work. Stop. Think about it. Start again. Do not practice bad form. Find and fix what needs fixing, then repeat the improved form. When you lose it, stop, think about it, play with it, start again. Do this in waist deep water so you can stand and rest as you think about what just happened. Mindful practice.

One more favorite Terry Laughlin quote, “Do not practice struggle.”

My approach to swim training

I am beginning to flesh out the Winds of Hawi website and thought I would share some of that here. Specifically the stuff about swim training. I believe it was Joe Friel who said there is nothing really new about long course triathlon training. Seems to me like every couple of years we hear about some new, radical method that will revolutionize the sport. They come and they go. Athletes who chase after them are no better off, while their wallets get lighter. I make no claims for doing anything new. Maybe a little offbeat.

When I took up swimming for triathlon I was fortunate in that throughout my life I spent considerable time around water. I recall vaguely some group swimming lessons when I was maybe five or six. Some scattered memories:

• Diving for shiny pennies
• Holding onto the edge of the deck and flutter kicking
• Whipping my arms around like a windmill
• The water was cold, we shivered a lot
• The girls were annoying

So I never had real swim training. Never learned to do freestyle. I think it was my dad who  taught me side stroke, and I stuck with that. The good news is that my rudimentary exposure to swimming made it easier to learn late in life compared to someone who did not have those opportunities. I am grateful for that.

When I started to learn how to swim, everything was aimed at swimming in pools. I ran into a huge problem there. Public pools were not open before work, and after work they were reserved for youth teams. I could not get started until late afternoon, which had me coming home late for dinner. Then I found the Oahu Club, a nice, clean facility that opened at 6:00AM for us old folks.

It was there that I learned to swim the Total Immersion way. After a week-long swim camp in Kona I bought Fresh Freestyle (one of the authors, Celest StPierre, taught the Kona camp) and used that as the basis for my pool workouts.

If there is one thing learning to swim has taught me, it is patience. Progress comes very slowly. It is so tempting to give up in the face of what feels like not getting anywhere. Literally! The goal that kept me going was my desire to race at Honu. A good example of the value in having a clear, attainable goal.

For the last year I kept going to the pool, almost out of habit. Then along came COVID-19. Like a lot of things, the pool closed. After a few weeks off I began swimming again at Ala Moana. It was at this time that I decided there must be a way to practice TI style in open water. And it was that insight that lead me to decide I wanted to be a coach.

This is what I have been spending much of my time on. I feel like an explorer. Am I looking at lands never seen my human eyes? Probably not. More likely my role will be like that of a travel guide, working out how to make the most of your time when you visit a place. The TI technique is the same whether swimming in a pool or open water. The initial challenge is how to execute the drills without the pool. After that, how to create simple workouts that can be done without a page of notes in a plastic bag pinned on the deck under a water bottle. I think the biggest challenge will be how to measure progress.

Here are a few key points I am working on:

• My hunch is that many triathletes who practice in the ocean just put in time, without focus.
• There are sections of shoreline where water depth tapers gently enough to allow TI drill practice (superman glide, spearing, etc.).
• Workouts prescribed by short distance can be just as effective when prescribed by stroke count, e.g. 4 x 25, 2 x 50.
• Time in the water is better for managing training stress (TSS) than total distance.
• Just as with the bike and run, there should be one long swim per week, and this is more effective when done in open water.
• Landmarks spaced reasonably far apart can be used to create a course of arbitrary but consistent length for doing assessments. This week I am investigating the buoys at Ala Moana.

Much remains to be explored, built, and tested. Hopefully some of the patience I practiced learning to swim will transfer to my new endeavor, learning to teach.

Maybe there is something in your life that might benefit from the same type of scrutiny. It is so much easier to keep on doing what we do. Now that COVID-19 has turned our world upside down and shaken all the spare change out of our pockets, use the opportunity to stop, question, turn upside down, and find a new way. Maybe better. Maybe just different. Time will tell. Be patient.

Tossing my hat into the ring

In my last post I described how I am designing my own Ironman training plan based on the principles put forth in Joe Friel's book, Fast After 50. I am ten weeks along, and very pleased with the result. It is still very much a work in progress. I have not polished up the final few weeks --  what Friel calls the peak and race periods -- and am just getting started turning place-holder swim workouts into something more specific.

The most significant improvement has been fatigue. The number one takeaway from Friel's book is that senior athletes need more time to recover from hard workouts. The corollary is, the older you are, the more this will be true. Since I am twenty years older than the age targeted in the book's title we can assume that recovery is an issue for me, and it is. I find that by following Friel's advice I do not struggle to get through the day, or feel the need to take a day off. This is important because consistency pays. Working too hard and taking time off due to fatigue and breakdowns produces less improvement and a greater risk of overuse injury than sticking with a well designed plan.

Which brings me to the title of this post. I have decided to try my hand at coaching. Naturally this has unleashed a host of daemons. Am I qualified? Do I have enough experience? What if nobody signs up? You know the ones. Would it have been easier if someone asked me to coach them first? Perhaps. But then I would have stumbled into a new role without giving it much thought, and that would not be fair to the client. Even now I must stress that I will be learning as we go, but when is that never true?

When I started to take this idea seriously I saw it as a way to supplement my retirement income, when I ever get around to retiring. As the plan came into focus I realized that I am a long way from making significant money as a coach. So, as it turns out, the timing is good. I still have a full time job and can focus on improving my coaching skills without relying on financial success.

One piece of good news on the financial front, I managed to reach this point without spending any money. Many years ago I had a project aimed at implementing computers in education. Many, many years ago, when laptops weighed ten pounds, cost thousands of dollars, and had a battery life of maybe an hour. Long before there was Google Docs or anything like it. When I began, my ideas were so revolutionary people thought I was a dreamer. If they were being polite. As time passed the world caught up and passed me by. I still had my old website, so I tore it down and repurposed it in support of my new coaching endeavor. I already had a social media presence, began when I took on the challenge of racing Ironman 70.3 Hawaii, a.k.a. Honu, and I decided to stick with it. Let's face it, Dunn Coaching does not send a good message, right? So, Winds of Hawi it is. Please give the website a look. And please keep in mind that I am just getting started. The foundation is there, most of the framing is done, the roof is on, but there is still much to be done.

At this time I have no plans to do what the established triathlon training programs around town do. No group training. No brick-and-mortar storefront. There is a place for that. It is my belief that there are other athletes like me, who prefer to train alone but could do better with a little help. I also intend to minimize in-person sessions. This makes good sense given the COVID-19 situation, but even after things get back to normal I believe an on-line relationship can be effective and less expensive. One advantage I have is that I live, train, and race in Hawaii. This should be an advantage to local athletes. 

In a future post I want to share what I have been doing with regards to swimming. With pools closed the only option has been the ocean, and I in the process of adapting Total Immersion training to open water.

I'm 70, now what?

I guess I enjoy writing my own training plan for the same reason I used to write music. The difference there was the social aspect. I did compose a couple of pieces just for me, but what I really enjoyed was figuring out what to put down in the score to get musicians to create a unique and satisfying experience.

At first I had very specific ideas about what should happen. I wanted to control every aspect of the sound. To accomplish this I piled on lots of dynamic, tempo, and articulation marks, as if any time a musician were to execute what I notated perfectly, the piece would sound the same.

I think it was during a summer music festival between my sophomore and junior years that I had a profound insight. I was not treating the performer as an artist. As an equal. A good performance will always be a partnership between the composer and performer. I began to see composing music more like writing a play. I create the core and the musicians embellish, in much the same way as actors and directors, costume designers and set designers give a fresh rendering of a play.

I am beginning to see where coaching is a lot like composing. And, having said that, I can see how different coaches with different styles may not enjoy developing training plans as much as I do. Who knows, maybe when I retire I should give coaching a try.

My latest project is how to accommodate the changes that normally take place as we age. I read Joe Friel's Fast After 50 when it first came out, but never really absorbed much of the details other than the need for more recovery time. When I took on the challenge of long course triathlon I purchased one of his plans designed for older athletes. It worked well and I might have done better had I stuck more closely to his plan. When I did not get the results I had hoped for I became an 80/20 convert. I must admit the Matt Fitzgerald plan I followed last year worked well and I had my best race ever, by far. I was following pretty much the same plan since February this year when a series of setbacks resulted in me deciding not to do Honu this year. And, as you know, Honu was eventually cancelled anyway.

It was while I was struggling with my eyesight issue and my poor marathon performance -- I saw more doctors this winter than I typically see in a decade -- that I realized that turning 70 was a significant event. I decided to go back and read Fast After 50 again. This time I paid closer attention. The result has been a complete shift in my approach to training.

Before I get to the specifics I must point out that Friel's book covers much more than how to schedule workouts. He has gathered an enormous collection of facts and study results that pertain to the senior athlete, and includes many guest authored sidebars that shed more light on what it means to be old and remain active. In short, if you are past 40 and an endurance athlete, you need to read this book. Someone (not me) asked him on Twitter if he was considering a sequel, like Fast After 70. I thought that was a great idea. Joe replied that he had approached his publisher with that very thought, but his publisher thought the audience was too small! (As I write this I see hints he is working on a book about coaching. Hope that comes true.)

Early in the book Friel points out that senior athletes typically fall into the habit of doing exclusively long and slow workouts, often referred to as LSD (Long, Slow, Distance). This results in a significant loss of aerobic capacity, as typically measured by VO2Max. We cannot stop the natural decline in VO2Max, but we can decrease the rate of decline by doing regular workouts at high intensity. Specifically, intervals with equal duration work and recovery segments, at or near VO2Max effort (meaning very hard).

In a similar way, the senior athlete often experiences a loss of lactate threshold. And, as with aerobic capacity, he describes in great detail how to perform interval sets to stimulate LTHR and FTP. There is no getting back to being in your twenties, but there is a lot we can do to hold onto what we have an keep going strong.

A third category of workout is good old LSD. He classifies these workouts as aerobic threshold. Harder than a Sunday bike ride with your family, but not much harder.

Last but not least comes strength training. The aging athlete will struggle to maintain muscle mass due to the natural decease in testosterone and other hormones. Lifting weights triggers the body's natural muscle development process and increases the levels of the hormones that contribute to successful performance. This is not go to the gym and get pumped strength training. He gives specific examples, and there is more in his Triathlete's Bible.

Next he goes into dose. How much work to do. He simplifies this beautifully by creating three dose ranges, high, medium, and low. For high intensity workouts the variable is reps. For aerobic threshold it is duration.

It is at this point that his genius really comes through. He assigns each workout type a priority based on the length of the target race and the training period -- base, build, peak, etc. All of these ingredients are arranged in easy to use tables. All you have to do is determine which period you are in, the priorities that apply based on the duration of the race, and lay out a week. This gives you three or four key workouts every week. After that it is up to you to fill in some additional low intensity work. Note that he does not specify which sport to use. He does explain when cross training works and when it does not. Above all he stresses the need for recovery. To reap the benefits of these hard workout days we must allow more rest time than we did when we were young. That is why senior athletes drift into doing LSD exclusively. A well done aerobic capacity or lactate threshold workout will leave you feeling drained for at least a day.

What I am trying is an alternating emphasis. I use a three day mesocycle, two hard weeks followed by a week that starts with plenty of rest and finishes with performance testing. I make the first week run intensive and the second week bike intensive. I do the anchor workouts in the featured sport and fill in the easy stuff with the other. The exception is the aerobic capacity workout, which for now is always done on the bike to reduce the risk of injury. Later, during build, if the run will be hilly I will do these as hill repeat runs.

In my last post I mentioned that some workouts are better done on the turbo trainer. To be useful, the high intensity workouts need to be done at just the right intensity. This is hard to control on the road. The low intensity workouts can accommodate some variability, and spending too much time on the trainer results in a loss of bike handling skills. Besides, it is much more enjoyable to get out and ride, and here in Hawaii we can all year.

Here is an example of a run intensive week in the late base period.

Priorities:

1. Aerobic Capacity
2. Aerobic Threshold
3. Lactate Threshold
4. Strength Training

I put ST workouts on Monday, AC workouts on Tuesday, LT workouts on Thursday, and AT workouts on Saturday, regardless of dose. How much of each to do -- the dose -- is based on the priority for this period. So in this case ST will be low dose, AC will be high dose, AT will be medium dose, and LT will be low dose.

Fill those in and the week looks like this. (The encoding is mine.)

Mon
    ST-FB-LD (FB means full body)
Tue
    gdC-AC-HD-01 (do AC on bike, even in run week)
Wed
    nothing yet
Thu
    gdR-LT-LD-01
Fri
    nothing yet
Sat
    gdR-AT-MD-130
Sun
    nothing yet

For a bike intensive week the Thursday and Saturday workouts are of the same type as above, just done on the bike.

The next step is to fill in some swim workouts and recovery workouts. For a run week the recovery workouts are done on the bike, and the reverse is true for bike weeks.

There is great temptation to fill up the schedule the way a typical triathlon schedule looks. Especially those Sundays. But the foundational idea is that senior athletes need more recovery time. Keep doing two-a-days and long weekends and in a month or two the wheels fall off.

I don't have a race to train for, so this is a perfect opportunity to try this out. I am just getting started, so stay tuned for progress updates.

Now that the season is gone ...

Unless you have been living in a cave on the island of Kahoʻolawe you have heard, repeatedly, stories about the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the world of sports. Nowhere has the impact been greater than in the realm of Olympic athletes. They only get one chance every four years. There is no getting around the fact that age is a critical factor in sports. In another four years we can expect a wave of fresh young athletes to sweep aside many of today's best.

When the IOC announced the postponement of this year's games they -- or was it Japan? -- promised to hold the games next year. One year is better than four, but is this a reasonable expectation? As I write this, discussions about what comes next are headline news. There is no consensus. On one extreme we have scientists who predict that our lives cannot return to normal until we have an effective vaccine that is available to all, and we should not expect that until Fall 2021 -- more than a year from now. On the other extreme we have anarchists protesting against government imposed stay-at-home orders, people who believe their intuition and gut feeling is all they need and explicitly reject the advice from scientists. Running back and forth between these extremes, changing direction so fast and so often it makes my head spin, we have our President, who justifies his decisions with magical thinking. The man who thought we should have business back to normal by Easter. The Easter we just had. I am on the side of science, so I doubt we will have anything looking like a normal athletic season until 2022.

The last time I posted here I was working to correct my double vision. My optometrist had suggested I go back to contacts. The results were not good. A real disappointment. I loved the wide angle view and the opportunity to use the visor on my Rudy Project aero helmet. But, as before, roughly an hour into the ride my double vision would show up, and get progressively worse, to the point where it was not safe to continue.

Some friends had suggested I see an ophthalmologist, so I got a referral and had an exam just as the COVID-19 stay-at-home order was taking effect here in Hawaii. The result? Yes I have double vision and contacts were no help. I also found out my Rudy Project sunglasses corrective lenses are too strong, which is why I never had good vision from the beginning. The fix is to add a prism effect to the right eye. This will lift the image just enough so that the eye muscles are not constantly struggling to align the images. We decided to try to implement this first in a new set of lenses for my sunglasses. The project it on hold until social distancing guidelines allow me to see the optician.

In the meantime I do most of my bike workouts on the turbo-trainer. Which is not a bad thing, since two a week are designed for that. I still do long rides on the road. Just not as long as I might otherwise, and I take a break when needed.

In my next post I plan to explain why two bike workouts a week are better done on the trainer. That and a whole lot more. For now I am going to head down to my sailboat and visit Kahoʻolawe, just to see if there really are any caves on the island. We can still sail, right?

(No, I don't actually own a sailboat.)

New eyes, and zone troubles

I'll begin by announcing my return to contact lenses. I cannot recall how long it has been since I last tried contacts. Ten years, maybe? The big deal then was that I could get lenses that corrected for astigmatism. They worked well enough under everyday conditions, but on the bike they were, well, unpleasant. If you want more details, see my last post.

This time around I can get a useful amount of close-up focus, plus the material is thinner and more porous. Hopefully this will make them less of a challenge. Wore them last Tuesday on a run around Diamond Head. Also wore my Rudy glasses with clear lenses. Good thing, as the wind was strong. The close-up correction is not quite enough for up close reading, but the Rudy bifocal lenses makes reading my watch easy. Without the corrective insert the Rudy Ryder glasses are light enough for running. Tomorrow will be my first long bike ride with them. We'll see how it goes, pun intended.

Now onto the other subject of today's blog, zone setting. A perennial challenge.

I paced today's long run by RPE and Stryd power. I knew my Stryd zones has not be updated since December so I was not relying on them as much as watts, but most of the time when my watch indicated power zone one I felt like I was in zone one, and likewise power zones two felt like two. There was even a stretch on the second lap when I knew I was going too hard and sure enough, the Stryd Zones Connect IQ app indicated zone three.

Back at home I reviewed the data and saw some big anomalies. The TrainingPeaks HR zone graph looked good compared to how I felt, but the power graph was off. It had me running in zone four. I know I was not running that hard.

The new Stryd website makes it more difficult than ever to enter a baseline value manually. I call it LTHR, they call it CP; same thing. Stryd insists on computing it. On automatic the site reviews data for the previous ninety days, sort of like WKO. On manual the site asks for a recent run result or their special test result, and again, they compute it. Frustrating, because I want to use Jim Vance settings, which are a good match for Joe Friel's work. I cannot find a way to just set my own CP.

Just for kicks I switched to auto and Stryd came up with 144. Hmm. My last test gave 143, but I was sure it was too low. Obviously Stryd is looking at the same run. Is that really the value? Now what?

Well, when in doubt, look at WKO. The new version does a nice job of separating run and bike results. I let it update, and the hero bar gave me run mFTP 147. Hmm.

Let's come at it another way. Today's run from 40 min. on felt like a solid zone two -- 2Z. HR was in fact a solid mid 2Z. It was power that seemed wrong. So I got out my zone calculator, which I programed using Jim Vance zones, and started plugging in run FTP values until I got a mid 2Z for today's power. Guess what? I got 148. I actually do not like backing into threshold settings this way, but it is a useful method for validating test results.

So, what to do? I will adjust my TrainingPeaks run power threshold from 143 to 148. Not a huge difference, but enough to help reduce my confusion and perhaps make my future workout efforts more productive.

Now I hope it doesn't rain too much tomorrow. I want to ride with my new eyes.

Seeing better is better

In my previous post I wrote about my vision issues. I worked more on this issue, culminating in extensive testing on last Sunday's ride, and I have identified a major contributor. When the corrective lens is too close to the eye, chaos ensues. That is all this post is about, so if you are not visually challenged you might want to skip this post.

A brief history of my eyeballs

When I started riding I was already wearing contacts, only for cosmetic reasons. All I needed were some sunglasses to keep my eyes from drying out. When I figured out that cheap, dime store sunglasses didn't cut it I tried a fancy pair of Smith sunglasses, with interchangeable colors. Picked them up at Surf N Sea in Haleiwa after one of Pattie's triathlon practices. Better, but dry, burning eyes were not banished, so in time I moved on the a full frontal wrap design by Oakley. Probably saw them used at the Tour de France. Still had problems.

On a typical ride I would develop dry, painful eyes around thirty minutes in, followed by a period of excessive, blinding tears, then settle down for an hour or two. On long rides the dryness would return, making the finish miserable due to pain and blurred vision. Several times the tearing was so intense it washed the lens out of my eye. Lucky for me it always stuck to the back of the sunglasses lens and I could retrieve it, but I considered these episodes a crash condition. Not good.

Eventually I gave up riding with contacts and just used my everyday glasses. It wasn't long until the entire ritual surrounding contacts seemed out of place in my life, so I gave them up.

I think it was when I started doing triathlon that I decided my eyes needed more protection from the wind. Rudy Project began advertising about corrective sunglasses, so I looked into them. (No pun intended, but, hey, not bad.) Turned out my correction is too high for their corrective lenses, but they did offer an optical insert that fits behind normal sunglasses. I went for that, and yes, they cost a pile of money.

One more cool thing about Rudy Project: readers. Bi-focal lenses. I had been disappointed to learn I could not read my Garmin head unit with my sunglasses -- a set of reader colored lenses fixed that. More money.

There was always a problem with my Rudys. The correction was never quite 20/20. I never did a test but I would guess they were around 20/70. I took them to my optometrist and he said that on his measuring tool they were spot on, but on me they did not produce the same sharpness as my regular glasses. Plenty good enough to see where I was going, but it was hard to read street signs or make out people's faces. I could make the image sharp by moving the glasses further away from my face. Further than the nose piece could accommodate. Not a viable solution.

Another issue that turned up every now and again was double vision. Typically at the end of a long ride. The road center-line would split into two diverging lines. Manhole covers would be doubled, one on top of the other. Blinking helped. Closing one eye -- either eye -- would eliminate the shadow image.

On my tri bike in aero position I had another problem. The top edge of the frame cut right across my field of vision. When I fiddled with the nose piece to raise them, the double vision struck with a vengeance. Last year I was able to adapt, as I recall riding Pineapple Hill and Honu with no vision issues. I think it was more a case of putting up with it than fixing it.

At the start of this season I went on a campaign to find a solution. Roka was highly recommended, so I wrote to them and was informed that their corrective road glasses did not go that high. Oakley corrective glasses cost a small fortune, and they too do not support my numbers. I hit a dead-end.

During my break from training I rode with Pattie's group, and since we were going slow and stopping to look at stuff I decided to wear my regular, everyday glasses. Wow, it was so nice to see everything so clearly! This is what I wanted from my sunglasses.

Then inspiration struck. My Rudy aero helmet came with a visor. I did try it once, with my Rudy glasses, and it would not fit. Not even close. But what about my everyday glasses? That was the testing I did last weekend, using two different pair. The results were conclusive.

With the visor I was immediately pleased with how large my field of vision was. No blocking line across the top. At first I thought the glasses fit fine, until I began to feel an unusual pressure on my nose, above where the nose pads normally hit. I figured the visor was pressing against the glasses, pressing them back and up a little. It wasn't long before double vision showed up.

Back at the car I made some adjustments, eventually removing the visor. My eyes felt better, and no double vision. Without the visor I fear than the wind will be an issue, but for now, this is the best solution. I also tried my not-so-aero helmet, and that was good, too.

To summarize, the Rudy sunglasses always had the corrective lens insert too close to my eyes. Everyday glasses with the helmet visor also caused focus issues due to the visor pressing the glasses back and up. Everyday glasses in the correct position work best, but wind may be an issue. I'll know more after tomorrow's time trial.

That's it for now.