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.