Becoming triathlete

Old new inspiration for 2012

2012-01-02T08:32:00.001-05:00

Call me geek, but for some reason I felt that the best motivation to get back to regular training will be with new watch. And not just any new watch, but the one that helped me train for many successful races - RS800cx.

For variety of reasons I could not get consistency in training last year - well the main reasons were abnormal amount of travel (its never good sign when the stewardess know your name) and of course 4 months long injury with additional 2 months recovery period which pretty much destroyed my tri season 2011.

I felt that I need to get some outside help with motivation to get out of bed early morning each day and get the workouts done. I think this new watch I got from my wife for Christmas will help me do just that. After all this is the year of aging up to the most competitive age group under the sun. And it is not 35-39.

Have a great 2012 everybody.

ChesapeakeMan Aqua Velo 2011

2011-09-26T09:07:00.003-04:00

See the full gallery on Posterous

p240.mov Watch on Posterous

This was fun race on Saturday. I went into it with no expectations - just go out there swim my best and ride my best. I knew the course and expected Choptank ballroom to be choppy and bike course to be very wet. In the end Choptank was calmer than I expected and the bike route was wet, but not as much.

The swim was actually really good with some chop at the end of each of the two 1.2 mile loops. The bigger challenge for me were jellyfish - got stung at least 5 times on my hands (sleeveless wetsuit) and my face. But I just kept going figuring that if the stinging does not go away by end of the swim I can get checked. It got better after few minutes and all was good. I got out of the water good 5 minutes faster than 2 years ago. That was very good sign.

Well off to the bike. No worries I don't plan to outline each of the 112 miles here, just highlights in case you plan to do the race - the course is pancake flat so do not expect any coasting. It also tends to be windy, we were lucky this year as wind kept to minimum. Be ready to ride through stretches of water on the road and don't be surprised if the puddle is bigger the next time around. The tide and wind can raise the level a bit - so we too rode through some puddles the first loop and on second through what seemed like good mile long puddle. If you ride through them keep to the middle as you can see the yellow line and follow it. The loop features about 4 miles of very rough route - it feels like shaker. You will hit it around 45-50 miles on first loop and about 80-85 on second. It's not too bad, but it can mess up your back and if you are not confident in your tri bars it is better to come out of them.

The bike was fine until mile 90 which seems to be my threshold point when I feel like - get me out of this seat. So I know to just stick with it and keep pushing as the end is near ;-). My bike time was about 13 minutes slower than 2 years ago which is mostly due to me not being able to stay aero for long time as my left hamstring was limiting me a little. Still I take it given the amount of travel and workload in the office over the past 6 weeks.

The really ice thing is that my effort was good enough to win my age group. Which was the highlight of the race for me. My friend Ron scored 3rd in his group and coach Craig finished 9th in the ultra distance only few days after he completed Ultraman UK. Congrats to both of them as well as all the others that raced this weekend.

To LP or not to LP - returning to racing from ankle injury

2011-07-15T16:08:00.001-04:00

Some of you may know that I managed to screw-up my foot pretty badly during the race series Ohio Triple-T in May. To make long story short - during the run in second of four races I stepped on lose stone while running down the trail. I twisted my ankle and had to completely stop. After a while I was able to start moving again so I first walked and then jogged it in. While I was doing that a big softball somehow grew around my ankle so I pulled the plug and went home. Well that sounds easy, but it was not - I drove 9 hours home from Ohio and cursed myself for not being more careful.

Fast forward to following Monday when I saw my dear doc in Foot and Ankle practice in Bethlehem - seriously great doc that tells it like it is which I really appreciate even though I may not like what he is saying at times. Initial analysis was that I messed it up badly and needed MRI. At the same time I got pair of crutches and a boot. After MRI I knew that it is not too good - 75% tear of ATFL and bone bruising in the ankle. Prognosis 4-6 weeks on crutches with boot and with ABSOLUTELY NO TRAINING. I tried to negotiate water running (which I hate) or swimming with pull buoy (which I tolerate - actually I love swimming, but with the pull buoy it is not as much fun). But was told that any load even minimal on the foot would not aid healing. Since I has overuse injury of the same ankle last year and rushed the return to racing I believed the man.

I was depressed like hell since I knew that my buildup to LP was seriously interrupted and that LP race is not happening. I was up in 70-80mi long rides at that point, I just broke 1:20 for 100m in the pool and things were going quite well even with running. After 2 weeks of being completely down I resumed some light core exercises, but I could not do anything else which really sucked big time. I'm not going to bother you with all the negative thoughts that I had back then, but it was not pretty and poor Dasa and Ian had to live with me. On the positive side I had more time to spend with them and we did quite a lot of fun things - like taking Ian to the movies for the first time, cheering on Dasa as she raced in local 5k, cheering on Ian as he raced in kids triathlon, trip to shopping mall on the weekend (I have not done this in a while). So it was actually good change of pace, but I definitely missed training and racing.

No I'm six, well almost seven, weeks from the injury. The crutches are in the basement since last week, boot came off on Wednesday and I have been swimming and biking for past almost 3 weeks. Training is slowly building up and everything is fine - except this thing called IM Lake Placid. In the initial enthusiasm after I returned to swimming and hand cycling I though I will attempt to 'finish the race'.

I figured I could swim 2.4 miles with no problem, bike 112 will be a challenge but it is doable and I can walk the marathon and still finish before midnight. That was the idea. After I had chance to seriously discuss this with my doctor, who understands that I'm little on the crazy side, I had to re-assess. Here is how the conversation went:

Me: What do you think about me doing the race just to finish.

Doc: What is the race again?

Me: Well it is a triathlon - swim, bike, run. I thought I could swim, then bike seated and then walk the run.

Doc: Yeah that sounds fine. But what are the distances again?

Me: Yeah it is an Ironman so little over 2 mi swim, 112 mi bike and marathon.

Doc: Are you crazy!? I can see how you can swim and bike it, but the walk will set you back a lot. There is good chance that you will be here on Monday after the race with the very same injury. Well the chance is more like 90% that the 6 weeks after the race you will be back on crutches and with your friend boot.

Me: OK. I really wanted to do this race.

Doc: Sure I can't stop you, but I'm putting down that you have been warned. You really have only 1 week to go from minimal walking in the boot to walk 26 miles. That is not enough. If we had 3 weeks we could try, but one week is just not enough time.

Me: OK let me think it over. In my head it was more like 'Shit this is not going to work. D*** F*** ankle.'

And I did rethink it. After overcoming the disappointment of not being able to do what I wanted to I made a decision that I'll start the race just to be part of the whole thing. You will see me swim the two loops and then do one loop on the bike. Then I'm going to call it a day and cheer on my friends that will be doing the whole thing (Good luck everybody!!!).

So what lead to this change of heart? Call it a reality check. Let me explain - one thing is for sure - the 6 weeks on my butt did not help raise my fitness. While I still have pretty good power output on the bike and can move pretty swiftly in the pool (despite my left foot kicking at maybe 50%) I do not have the needed muscular endurance. This past Saturday I did 40 mi ride during which I bonked like no other time and I was pretty tired the rest of the day. Then just for the fun of it on Sunday I swam in 5k race and that was very hard. I finished about 20 minutes later than I would have expected. First 1.5mi loop was OK, but the second one was really hard and I was very sore for 2 days after the event.

It is like being splashed with cold water. I need to face the reality that getting back to the fitness I had at the end of May will take time. I need to start working on my endurance and rebuild it. So the plan is treat LP as training day and a preparation for events in September or later in the year. I will be back to T-Town doing track cycling in August and later Aqua Velo race in MD before returning to full triathlon race. And I will stay in shorter distances for the rest of the year. I'm already planning for 2012 when I will not jump back to Ironman training, but rather rebuild and take a stab at the sub-5 half that is still on my bucket list (I miss like 3 minutes so I should probably practice transitions ;-).

So my friends I'll see you in Lake Placid, but do not try to keep up with me since I'm doing much shorter ride than you do and I do not need to save my legs for the run. I will definitely do a hard 56mi loop and swim hard as well. It will be blast. I'm already looking forward to it.

Polar what were you thinking? Why I'm keeping RS800cx and sending the RCX5 back

2011-06-20T13:35:00.001-04:00

Polar may not like me for saying this, but the RCX5 does not seem like the winner I was hoping it to be based on the marketing materials and buzz. Over the past few days of playing with the RCX5 run package I made decision to send it back to seller. I was hoping that Polar finally has a great unit for multi-sport athlete, but they did not quite get it. It certainly is not replacement for RS800cx as it has been understood by many users. If anything it is an upgrade for RS400 users.

I have been using RS800cx for over 18 months and like it quite a bit. I think that even now it is the most flexible training heart rate wrist unit in the market. I will continue to use it since the RCX5 unit has many serious shortcomings to fit my needs and to replace or even complement the RS800cx. This article is a short summary of the main reasons for this decision. I hope it helps people make decision of whether they should be keeping RS800cx or replacing it with RCX5. So lets get started with the gaps I discovered.

First up is lack of altitude recording - Polar designers what were you thinking? This unit is targeted to triathletes that are known for being data obsessed. Altitude data is quite important for post workout analysis and the unit that does not capture altitude is utterly useless for TSS calculations and even less advanced run analysis.

Second - planned exercises have two major issues. First one is that currently the unit supports only 4 phases (that can be repeated) in the planned exercise which is just very basic and major step down from 12 phases that RS800cx supports. This may be fine if your exercise structure is fairly simple - like warmup (1st phase), intervals with fixed recovery (2nd and 3rd phase), cooldown (4th phase). If you have ladder workout then you are out of luck with the 4 phases.

Third major gap is that there is no way to schedule cadence based workouts - really? How often do people perform cadence drills or hill simulation workouts with 50-60rpm in big gear - I do quite often. So this is a major problem. This can also be problem for running if you are trying to improve your running cadence. RS800cx does this with no problem. Again Polar what were you thinking?

Fourth - forcing users to use polarpersonaltrainer.com - while I see benefit of moving the data to cloud and generally do not disagree with this concept I do have a problem with the way Polar implements this. I have NO WAY TO DOWNLOAD DATA TO MY PC DIRECTLY and load them to WKO+ or TrainingPeaks.com. Yes there is way to load data to PolarPersonalTrainer.com and then download them back to my PC so I can finally load them to TrainingPeaks.com. Yeah that sounds like 5-10 minutes per workout file. Not interested. Hint for Polar team - look at how Garmin does this - they have a fairly simple client on the PC/Mac that is capable of storing the files locally so people can actually use them. Also having to synchronize planned exercises with the web makes it hard to make last minute changes in exercise - again Garmin's model may be way to go here - their small client lets you create and synchronize planned exercises.

Update 2011/06/21: Fellow blogger and Polar enthusiast pointed out that I missed one feature in the Polar software that lets users extract the data files from the HRM to local files. He has blog post in German on his site that you can read crudely translated to English here. It shows how this can be done.

So there are really only 4 reasons for me to send the RCX5 back. When it comes to it the first two items on this list are the most significant reasons why the unit went back since I do not see how Polar can address the first one and while they can probably work on the second one I do not see that happening any time soon. So I continue to use RS800cx as it is definitely superior to the new unit.

Fifth - lack of support for pre-defined exercises outside of the Plan. This is something that I really like on RS800cx. I do few run and bike sessions quite regularly and I see no need to schedule each one of them in my diary. I do have bunch of pre-defined exercises like pickups, on-off repeats, recovery runs with pace limits, recovery spins with HR limits stored in my unit and can use them without any additional work. With the model implemented in RCX5 it is no longer possible.

These are the five main reasons for me to send the unit back. There are other, less important functions, that RCX5 leaves out compared to RS800cx. Just check the Polar discussion boards for more details.
Funny thing is that I did not even get chance to train with RCX5 due to my injury. I just played with the unit on PC, Mac and polarpersonaltrainer.com to simulate the training needs I know I have when I'm in full training. In the end this may be a blessing since I will get full refund and not just partial.

Well I must say that while Polar is not going to get my money for RCX5 they did get few things right in the unit. Here are the few things I wish RS800cx did for me that RCX5 does - HR recording during swim, heart touch function, being able to switch off HR belt for specific sport, easier way to switch between sports in multi-sport exercises. But these are not important enough for me to overlook the major 5 issues I described above.

My recommendation for anyone who already has RS800cx and is happy with it - keep it and if you want something new get the GPS G5 sensor which is really small and you may also get the new cradle for S3 sensor that is for RCX5 and holds the sensor better on the shoe. Otherwise I do not see any reason to upgrade to RCX5. I hope Polar has another unit in development that will replace RS800cx and will be step above RCX5. I really wish it was more like RS800cx and less like RS400.

Disclaimer - none of the units in this review were provided to me by any company or indicidual. I paid for them with my own money which I hope to get back (at least for the RCX5). I like Polar products and as their loyal customer I feel obligated to call them on products that they did not get quite right.

We are ready for tomorrow - Dasa is too

2011-04-30T20:54:00.002-04:00

via twitterrific

Posted via email from musiljan's posterous

Not exactly sure how this is going to make a difference when I apply it in the most chaffed area in riding.

2011-04-30T20:47:00.001-04:00

via twitterrific

Posted via email from musiljan's posterous

Polar Wind Link vs. Polar IR

2011-03-28T12:58:00.001-04:00

On the weekend I promised picture of the two side by side. Here it is.

Note that the silver/gold USB stick is the IR interface that works with RS800 line and the black one is the Wind Link that Polar users for the new RCX5. There is no need for the Wind Link to have clear line to the WIND sensor or watch which should make the data transfers much easier.

What we know week after Polar RCX5 was announced

2011-03-26T16:03:00.001-04:00

It has been about a week since we learned that Polar will be introducing RCX5 between May and September of 2011. Here is summary of what we already know from the correspondence with Polar, public announcements and responses to people on social networks and discussion boards. I'm hoping to get my hands on one as soon as Polar has one for me and give it a good review. Until then I'll post any news I learn on this space or my twitter account @musiljan.

The watch resembles the CS500 computer unit - very similar look of the face, oversize display with 4 lines of data.
The unit will be shipped first in black color (May-July depending on market) and then in red in September.
It will be compatible with existing WIND sensors with exception of power sensors.
It will allow fast switching between different sport profiles with just one button.
Unit has hybrid HR belt that will allow capture of HR during swim and also will work with Polar enabled exercise units
The unit will gauge your current state from your HR prior to exercise and adjust the HR zones accordingly - Polar calls this Zone Optimizer and it looks like a next generation of their Tests that are in RS800cx and other models. Only here it is not a test and it seems to be done automatically before starting workout.
The unit will be compatible with Windows and Mac.
The data transfer will no longer be IR, but the new Wind Link low power data transfer - I'll post how this looks like since I had one for about a year now.
The data transfer will be possible to polarprotrainer.com site that will be updated to offer similar experience as PPT5 (including planning workouts and such).
With introduction of RCX5 Polar also introduce improved S3+ stride sensor with hard cradle that guarantees better accuracy and much smaller version of GPS sensor G5 that will be powered with rechargeable battery (charged through mini USB port).
The packages Polar will offer are similar to ones for RS800cx - basic unit (with HR belt, Wind Link), Run (same as basic + new S3+ sensor), Multi (same as basic with G5 sensor and pouch), Bike (basic plus bike speed WIND sensor).
Some Polar distributors are already taking pre-orders - I placed mine yesterday.
Polar indicated they will continue to sell RS800cx models even after introduction of RCX5 (heard on Slowtwitch). It looks as if this is additional unit in their line up not necessarily replacement of RS800cx line.

If you missed it Polar DK posted great overview video in addition to the Polar official tease video posted on their Facebook page and corporate site.

Polar DK posts more detailed video with RCX5

2011-03-23T13:42:00.001-04:00

Thanks to the web users more details about RCX5 are emerging - user argmac posted this link on Polar discussion forums. It is another YouTube video that shows key RCX5 features as one triathlete uses them. Pretty neat.

Few more details on RCX5 revealed

2011-03-23T12:28:00.001-04:00

Yesterday Polar posted few pictured of RCX5 on their US Facebook page (one enclosed below - thank to Polar). The unit has great design pretty much in line with the CS500 cycling computer. It looks very clean and with oversize display it looks like a great improvement.

Today Polar posted press release highlighting the key features of the RCX5 unit:

New Zone Optimizer feature to help fine tune the training to current level of stress/recovery status
Hybrid HR belt allowing to capture HR data in water (also should work with
Sport specific parameters and personal settings - I assume this will be HR zones, sensor selection per sport
One button switch between the sport profiles
Smaller GPS sensor (G5) with re-chargable battery - via mini USB
Improved S3+ sensor - new cradle to hold on the shoe laces, improved accuracy
Compatibility with existing WIND sensors (though no word on power capture)
Planned upgrades to the polarpersonaltrainer.com site including training load (is this TSS?) and support for personal training programs

Few things I hope to answer once I get my hands on this unit (which I hope will be in week or so):

Integration with 3rd party training sites and software like TrainingPeaks.com or FirstBeat Athlete
How easy / difficult it is to move from PPT5 to Polar site - what we gain/lose with this transition
Support for legacy sensors - e.g. older S3, G3 and cycling sensors
Ease of transition between sports - should not be a problem with weekly brick sessions or multiple brick sessions
Do we still have the strong planning functions we used to have in PPT5
How does the S3/S3+ work with G5
Any new features the watch offers we have not seen in RS800cx
Accuracy of G5 in real life training conditions - woods, tall buildings, etc.
Real life test of HR during swimming - well back to looking geeky in the pool
Data transfer with the new Polar Link technogy
Using PC and Mac with the unit

If you have additional questions let me know and I'll make sure to test them out. Well assuming I have access to all the pieces required. If you send me question like this: How easy is it to mount the unit on Vision tri-bars I'll have hard time answering that unless you send me your tri bars as well ;-).

RCX5 teaser on Youtube

2011-03-21T14:43:00.001-04:00

Reader *Y* alerted me to this video that was posted by Polar Singapore and later announced by Polar USA on their Facebook page. It is not exactly great look at the watch, but you can catch how it looks like in better quality that what the leaked picture shows (see the previous post from Saturday).

New Polar RCX5 triathlon unit coming out soon

2011-03-19T10:37:00.001-04:00

The internet has been buzzing with rumors about the new triathlon unit from Polar. First discussion appeared few weeks ago on Slowtwitch where users Chris and wvarta from Polar noted that new products are indeed going to be announced as soon as April. It seems that the news will be announced sooner since there is new thread on Polar forums linking to leaked picture of the new watch and to French Polar site that is promising announcement of new unit the Polar RCX5 on Monday March 21st.

Good source in Polar confirmed we can expect announcement on Monday through Polar USA Facebook page. So stay tuned until Monday. I certainly hope Polar listened to our feedback and added at least some of the highly requested functions to the watch.

From what you can see from the picture it looks as if the new unit has dual belt (e.g. belt that works with both W.I.N.D. sensor and the older 5kHz frequency which is great news for people going to gym often and missing their HR on the display of treadmill or stair master). It remains to be seen if the watch itself works on dual band as well which would make it able to record HR under water - common complaint to Polar, Suunto, Garmin and Times as none of these units does this so far. The next improvement seems to be with the GPS unit as Polar is introducing a new one with this line the G5 - it is hard to see what the sensor looks like, but I would expect longer battery life and better GPS sensor inside.

The next improvement is use of the new Polar WIND Link unit for data transfer which works similar to Bluetooth so there is no need to have line of sight between the unit and the USB sensor. S3 sensor seems to be slightly different shape, color and the fork that holds it in place seems to have different shape as well. So we will see what the improvement is there.

The unit itself looks like little bit of a come back to the original design of Polar watches from 70s (or it may be just the picture). And it seems that there will be different color models - orange and black are showing on the picture. The prices seem to be around the same level as for the RS800cx units today - from 299 EUR for watch with belt and WIND Link to 399 EUR for the multisport pack with GPS unit.

Well that is what I can glean from the picture. Rest is to be revealed I'm sure soon. By the way if the unit is any good on the paper I'm most likely going to upgrade - especially if the GPS works well I may prune my HRM stash and just stick with one or two instead of current running count of 5+.

My own brick - real one

2010-12-18T14:06:00.001-05:00

Today I received small, but quite heavy package. I was wondering what I ordered for Christmas only to find a brick from Savageman Triathlon I did few months ago. It is a nice addition to my collection of trophies and definitely one that is the heaviest.
If you have not heard about Savageman - look it up on the web or look at my posts about the race on this site. Since I'm posting from my phone I can not easily link them. It is a great race and I'm pretty sure I'll be doing it again in 2011.

Location:Susan Rd,Coopersburg,United States

Firstbeat Athlete discount from Suunto and Great pricing on Timex Global Trainer on Amazon

2010-12-12T08:29:00.001-05:00

FistrbeatAthlete discounted

I just received Suunto newsletter where they advertise offer of discounted FirstBeat Athlete. Based on discussion on Suunto Forums there is no validation whether you own the Suunto T6c watch so even people with RS800cx / RS800 / CS600 / CS600x should be able to take advantage of this offer (well anyone really). Here are the details. The pricing is pretty good - 20 bucks discount (both EUR and USD pricing) over regular pricing. The catch is that you need to access the web store through Suunto's site where it says - 'Suunto t6 users can now buy FBA ATHLETE at a special discount price of €49.90 (normally €69.90) or $49.90 (normally $69.90).'

Pull off your training shoes, switch on your PC
Firstbeat ATHLETE software puts a host of detailed training analysis tools at your fingertips on your own PC.

It complements Movescount.com by offering advanced training planning and analysis tools for offline use. The software, available in seven languages, includes a full physiological analysis and a Training Coach feature for optimizing your future sessions.

And if you're a Suunto t6 user, you can now buy ATHLETE at a special discount price. Learn more about Firstbeat ATHLETE
Visit Movescount.com

Timex Global Trainer sub-200 bucks on Amazon

If you are in market for GPS watch you may find the pricing on the Timex Global Trainer Speed and Distance GPS Watch on Amazon pretty compelling. It is at 169 as of this morning for HR-less version - it was as low as 120 bucks yesterday. And the Timex Global Trainer Speed and Distance with Heart Rate GPS Watch goes for little over 200 buck - still a bargain. Great price considering that these babies sell for 300 bucks otherwise.

My only reason for not using this watch more at this time is Timex's decision not to support foot pod which is a real bummer for us who have to run on treadmill - PT prescribed way to recovery. Hey I can run which is amazing and run without pain which is even better. But if you do majority of training outside this may interest you. I used this unit during 2010 in few half iron races and it is a solid performer on par with Garmin FR310xt. And it looks better in my opinion.

UPDATE: The Global trainer has 50 bucks promotion on top of the discounts so you can actually get one for 120 bucks w/o HR monitor or for 155 with HR monitor. That is a steal. By the way Amazon applies the discount when you order, no need to mail in the MIR that is linked in the comments. Thanks James for pointing it out. I actually bought one myself today. For 120 bucks this is an amazing unit even without support for foot pod.

More pictures from Savageman

2010-10-05T00:24:00.001-04:00

This one is only with pictures from the race with little bit of commentary. The pictures published so far are from the bike course and finish line - well areas that you are probably most interested in anyways.

Let's start with the Westernport wall - as I said in the race report I do not recall much about what was happening around me. I just focused on what I was doing and on avoiding any take downs by fellow racers. All photos seem to be from before pulling the handle bars. In any case if you think about this race invest in tripple ring or get easier gearing - at least 25 in the back and possibly compact crank in the front. I rode with 53 (36) x (11 - 26) I had 28 on the gearing, but was unable to use it as it is just too big to work with my derailer.

The Westernport Wall continues with climb that is shown here - nothing you can call easier.

Then you get little bit of a recovery before getting to the Big Savage where it is more climbing - no pictures from there yet.

Then it is a lot of descending - not really sure where these are from, but I can assure you that the descends were few and very short and fast.

And here is the first part of the Killer Miller - there is a lot of support on this climb as well - devils with forks and all just like on Westernport wall, only not as many people. I'm the one to the right just starting the climb.

And finally the finish line - better photo than from my exclusive photographer ;-).

Few remarks about the course

Forget your great tri bike it is useless on those hills and there is only few segments of the road where tri bike is of any use. It is safer to get your road bike out since it handles better and is probably lighter (well mine is anyways).
Forget your TT specific helmet - it is easy to overheat on this course and there is nothing to be gained with tri-specific helmet since you either go 40mph for a minute or climb a hill at 10mph for next 20.
Get arm warmers - you will be happy you did at least until you get to Westernport. Then you will be glad to take them off.
I wrote about gearing above - definitely at least 25 in the back or triple chainring if you can.
Plan to spend little more time than usual on the bike course - it is hard one.
Remember that Westernport wall is just the beginning of long climbing journey. It really only gets harder from there.
First year I recommend to go for the brick and forget about the overall time. This is the slowest half I ever did and I still enjoyed most of it (except the bonking part).
Do not worry about walking parts of the run - most people do that even pros when they get to the edge.

Brick in the wall - Savageman 70.0

2010-10-04T23:32:00.001-04:00

This season has been quite strange. I spent large portion of it either injured or re-building my fitness. Not ideal in many ways, but I guess the sport is not only roses and successes. This year was certainly year of few setbacks and many getting back on the horse. I was glad that I was able to re-build my fitness just before the Savageman which was my second A-race this season. And I had more than 2 weeks of running in my legs, much better than what I started with in Rhode Island. I did this race with one goal - get the brick in the Westernport wall. If you have not heard about Savageman before here are few highlights - as opposed to most triathlons this one is very hilly (which is understatement) and that goes both for bike and run. Bike is more brutal than run, but more on that later. If you want to look at the race details I recommend to check out the race site.

I guess the biggest novelty of the race is the climb on the Westernport wall where you have chance to get your own brick in the wall if you climb the wall without unclipping and finish the race. But that really is not the biggest challenge. But let me start from the start of the race. I'll skip all the prep work, food and bathroom stops. Lets briefly talk about the swim which is quite nice - it is done in parallel to the shore which makes sighting easy and the buoys are easy to see. The interesting thing are the turn buoys which are big turtle on one side and if I recall correctly we swam by big swan and turned back at another colorful buoy on the other side before returning to the beach. Overall the swim is easy to navigate, visibility is great and in water start is what I generally prefer. The only thing to watch for are the rocks on the bottom of the lake - just be careful there are many and few are pretty sharp. My swim was very good and felt great after exit from the water. Now onto the bike.

I knew bike will be challenging, unfortunately I did not have enough time on Saturday to scope out the course so I was riding it based only on what I knew from the race site and maps that they provided. Which is actually plenty compared to other races. This is one of the few races that provide video of the race course, Google maps, Garmin files and turn by turn directions (for all three legs of the race). So back to the bike - it starts with some rolling terrain during the exit from the park and then onto the first hill. It is not a hard one to conquer, but it is just a warning for what will come later in the race. The next few miles are rolling terrain which is good to recover from the first hill. Enjoy that because later you will not have that luxury. First long downhill is marked as dangerous and I caution anyone to be very careful. The descends are steep and curves pretty sharp. Combine that with loose gravel on the road and it pays to take it little easier that you would on normal road. The descend is very long and takes you all the way to the city of Westernport. There is really nothing much to talk about here other than the views are stunning and the ride feels more like your weekend ride through nice area than like race.

When you get to Westernport you have completed 18 miles and it feels like the bike is going to be pretty fine. But rememer you were descending for good portion of those 18 miles and what goes down must come up. And in Westernport it starts to come up. The wall itself is hard to climb and you really need to pace it. When I hit the bottom few kids yelled at me to "not use all I have in my legs on the wall" and little later someone yelled to make the BMC proud. It was one big party with people lining the wall and cheering on the racers. I really do not remember much about the people on the wall as I was focusing on keeping steady rhythm up the wall and avoiding other racers that could potentially take me down. As I was climbing the last segment that is 30% grade (yeah that is not typo) and I was doing about 0.5 mph my handlebars came loose. Thanks to all the track racing I did earlier I was able to stabilize the bike in track stand and resume climbing with putting very little power onto the handlebars. I was glad to be done with the wall and stopped to ask around if anyone had bike tool so I can tighten the bars. Well I could not find anyone with bike tool so I decided to keep going to the next aid station that is only 6 miles away - well 5 of these miles are uphill at pretty good grade. You can read more about the climb to Big Savage Mountain on Savageman site. My handlebars were getting more and more loose and I was really concerned if I will be able to continue since nobody I asked had the tool with them. Luckily at the top of the Big Savage the aid station had few bike tools so I stopped for about 5 minutes to make sure my handlebars are tight and secure since we were about to do some serious descending.

While the roads from Big Savage are much better than the first descend I recommend to take them easy - there are quite a few hairpin turns and you do not want to go too fast - this is the only race course where the organizers do not lie when they say that you could get killed there. The hairpin turns are reminiscent of alpine turns with hill on one side and long steep ravine on the other. But the course is very well marked and all you need to do is read the signs and slow down when they warn you to do so. No kidding - I ran into one guy in the bathroom after the race and he has broken collar bone on the course - just saying. There are several other climbs and they come quick - that is one thing about this course - the climbs seem very long and steep and descends are steep and fast so there is very little time to recover. Next year in prep for this race I can imagine doing my own version of Emmaus 2-5-10 since it is very close to how you feel on those hills in MD. But back to the course. The several climbs and descends will take you to mile 38 where is the Killer Miller - and it really deserves its name. By that time I was seriously overheating, tired from all the climbs and this one takes the cake. It is quite steep and relentless. It takes a lot of mental energy not to unclip and walk which some people did. Once you unclip there is really no way to re-start the climb - it is that steep. I ended up zig-zagging the top part of it as I was getting into the bonk zone. I stopped at the aid station on top of the Killer Miller, declined the Miller Light since I don't drink that beer and instead got more gels, salt tablets and water. I knew I was on the edge.

The final few miles to T2 are not really flat by any means. You will experience some hills that you will chuckle about and call them false flats since they feel like that after all that climbing. But there are few hard short climbs that sap your energy before the run. Savageman site provides this nifty table of all the key climbs which really sums the bike course well though it leaves out some smaller climbs:

Name	Location	Length	Avg Grade	Max Grade
Toothpick	0.5 mi	0.25 mi	9%	16%
Westernport	18.5 mi	1.2 mi	12%	31%
Big Savage Mtn	23.4 mi	2.4 mi	6%	21%
Savage River State Forest	30.0 mi	2.8 mi	4%	7%
McAndrews Hill	32.8 mi	0.6 mi	9%	19%
Otto Lane	35.1 mi	0.6 mi	8%	17%
Killer Miller	38.1 mi	1.3 mi	8%	22%
Maynardier Ridge	43.8 mi	0.25 mi	12%	23%

One thing that I liked a lot on this course is how close you get to other people and you can not really be drafting since you all go about 3 mph up the hill. Second is that the bike course is simply awesome - it beats you up like nothing around here. I loved the Black Bear Half which is no longer on calendar and thought that was hard bike - well not any more. This is the new benchmark. I guess I need to check out Silverman in Vegas next...

This is the second race where I was glad to get off the bike - first one was Chesapeake Man Aqua Velo last year. I took T2 very easy - I mean I even sat down to change into my shoes and chatted with the Canadian guy that was racked next to me. At this point I knew that I'm solidly in bonkland and I needed to do some damage control before I can really run. So the first order of the day was to get in as much nutrition as I can tolerate without overloading the system. Hard to do when your brain is not thinking clearly. I was getting in few gels, banana and plenty of water. My first 5 miles of the run were pretty bad. I ran some of it, but I just had to power walk all the hills (and there are few through the camp site) and then walk the hill on the other side. Main concern there was that it is trail with many loose stones that are not well tolerated by my ankles. I was happy that I started to feel much better once I got back on the road and had about 2 miles back to the transition area to start my second loop. On the second loop I continued to fuel with water, Hammer Heed and things continued to go pretty well. While my first loop was horrendous the second one was not bad. I decided to run all the way to the trail and I did. On the way I passed many other athletes and some of them were only on their first loop which was encouraging. As I rounded the cone on the top of the hill I ran also down the hill while paying attention to my footing since last thing I wanted was to damage the ankle. I ran all the way to the finish. It was funny since I got passed by Jeff Mallett with about 400m to go. I knew Jeff was racing there along with Dave Scott. Unfortunately I did not have the pleasure if meeting Dave who was there on speaking engagement during the pre-race dinner. I do not believe he was racing.

So I got my brick and finished the race standing up. Lessons for next year - well first one is to plan nutrition for another 30 minutes on the bike that was a major mistake on my part that put me in a big hole. I will also need to re-think the mix of carbs and proteins for the course as well as the salt intake. The day starts cold and get warm to hot as it progresses and that requires little more salt than I planned. And lastly I'll shoot to improve my climbing time on the Big Savage - I can easily cut 5-7 minutes that I lost searching for the bike tool. That way I can get closer to time of Phil Graves who climbed the whole thing in 30.5 minutes (compared to my 43). Well not that I can compare myself with Phil. Funny note though - I was not the only one who bonked. On my first loop I caught up with one pro who was deeply in bonkland and we chatted a bit. He was really struggling to get to the finish and basically walked most of the hills to control the damage before resuming run on the downhill on the way to the finish. If you like unusual races with their own flavor in great and nice part of the country I can only recommend this one.

After crossing the finish line - which looks like I danced a little there, I reunited with my family and took Ian to the lake where I took the much needed ice bath and Ian was so nice to give me a proper post-race massage. I really like the area - it is beautiful especially at this time of the year. We spent day on the lake in rented boat which was great. We had opportunity to see the whole area and I did not need to walk which is always concern before any long race. And family usually does not want to sit in the hotel and watch TV - well we can do that at home. What was really great on the boat trip was that you could park the boat at different places around the lake and go for lunch, ice cream or coffee. That was really good.

For accommodation we used Suites at Silver Tree which is a great place - about 5 minutes away from race site by car and close to the local stores, cinema and restaurants. The area is quite rural so do not expect many chain restaurants or Whole Foods there. It is really nice site and we will be back next year to perhaps improve on the finish time a little bit.

Last ProAm race of the season in T-town

2010-09-14T23:57:00.001-04:00

What a great night to close the ProAm racing season 2010 in T-town. Racers were on fire, the weather was great for racing and the fans were there - well the core of the fans that come on Tuesdays. The entry is free, beer is cheap and the atmosphere is great. It is much more laid back in the stands than on Friday's, but on the track it is as heated as ever. We came few minutes late so we probably missed one or two races, but the ones we saw were great - plenty of 'Devil takes the hindmost', some unknown distance races, 6 laps race in which winner is determined on 2nd lap, 2nd place on 4th lap and third on 6th lap (that one is pretty hard - if you decide to go for the win on 2nd lap and do not quite make it it is most likely over), and a 10 miler which was fun to watch. I took few pictures that you can see on Flickr. Just click on the picture below.

Great velodrome session

2010-09-12T19:03:00.001-04:00

Today I signed-up for 'Try the track' session at the local velodrome in T-town. It is one of the few velodromes in the US and one that is only about 20 minutes away from my house. I already did have some experience riding the track from the previous weeks when I took the AirProducts developmental program for new track riders.

Today was different though - lots more people on the track. 22 to be exact so one needed to pay more attention and communicate more with the people around. The program was scheduled to take about 4 hours, but we lost some time to rain. Well there is no way anyone is riding track sloped 28 percent during rain. The rain delayed the start by about 45 minutes, but once we got rolling it was a lot of fun.

First we were split into two groups by ability and rode two pace lines just like in pursuit races. Leading each group was coach who controlled the pace so the groups stayed at equal distance from each other. Then on a whistle the rider right behind the coach had to jump the gap and make it to the other group. Lots of sprinting.

Then we did some racing in smaller groups of 4-8 people - normal scratch races with coach pacing the group for first 1-2 laps and then letting us go. I did well in the first race - knowing my strength I positioned myself at the front (first race was a 1k out of which only 1.5 lap was on our own so I wanted to ride from the front). It was good planing since nobody was able to jump on my wheel when the coach peeled off and I kept pushing the whole 1.5 laps.

Then we did races in three little bigger groups and I was paired up with bunch of strong roadies. I did not mind it even knowing that the distance was 5 laps. Once we got into pace line we rode 1.5 laps, the coach peeled off and I was on. I knew I can hold it or if someone was on my wheel we can tag team. But there was a problem - the tail of the group was not in the pace line when we started so we basically caught up with them on 3rd lap, had to slow down and the race got restarted. Well so much for saving energy. I had so much lactic acid in my legs that it was challenging to repeat the attack. I asked the guy in front of me who was strong to tag team with me. We lead the race for 3 laps, but then I ran out of steam. That wasted sprint to make the gap in the false start was just too much to keep the pace for too long. Ended up finishing little worse than I wanted, but it was a lot of fun.

More so with the coaches that were all very experienced track riders - well there is probably no one more qualified in T-town to talk about track racing than Marty Nothstein that was accompanied with two other coaches - Bobby Livingstone (who fit me on my road bike) and another gentleman whose name escaped me.

We got a feel for just how good these gys are - while we were racing all out both coaches riding with us just zoomed by us and kept encouraging us to put more effort. Amazing athletes.

I'm sure I'll be back to the track this year and next year I'll partake in the Masters and Rookies races that seem like a lot of fun.

Location:Trexlertown, PA

New IM 70.3 Pocono Mountains

2010-09-10T10:06:00.001-04:00

I'm super excited about the new Ironman 70.3 Pocono that has been advertised in the latest edition of Triathlete Magazine. It is scheduled for October 2nd 2011 in Stroudsburg, PA. More details and registration should be available on October 1st at Ironman Pocono Mountains site.

Challenging myself or IMLP here I come

2010-07-28T14:25:00.001-04:00

While my last post may sound like I'm down it is not the case. I'm actually back to regular training even with my busy work and travel schedule. I have just recently signed-up for my next big challenge. So next year on July 24th I'll be racing with about 2500 of my closest friends in one of the oldest IM races in the US. Entry is confirmed, money spent and all that remains is to train for it. I'm really looking forward to this. Until then I'll keep racing and get back on the running horse.

Two steps forward, one step back...

2010-07-25T22:06:00.001-04:00

... that is how I can characterize this season. Compared to last year I've had it all - overuse injury earlier in the season that put me out of run training for over 60 days. I managed to have pretty serious crash on the bike just about two weeks before being able to resume running, luckily nothing broken. Just lots of bruises and some deep scars that are still healing. Due to all this I had few DNS races and one intentional DNF in Jerseyman where I pulled out right after good swim and great bike leg. I came back to racing few weeks ago in Providence, RI in the Ironman 70.3 where I had pretty good showing. My swim was not the best, mostly due to misreading the current, but bike was pretty good and on the run I managed to survive and not blow up. It was pretty big accomplishment considering the longest run leading into the race was 8 miles and I had been running for little over 3 weeks. So today I was ready to increase the effort and have another good race. Well it was not to be.

The day started pretty well - nice weather, little hot but not unbearable. Water was too warm for wetsuit, but that did not bother me. If anything it makes transition faster and everyone swims w/o one. I did my pre-race routine, chatted with my enmu peers and went for a short warmup swim. Water was really nice - not too hot, but warm enough not to make you feel chilly. I was ready. We lined up just few minutes before 8am and right at 8 we were sent off. On the way to the first buoy there was some fighting for positions and feet, but nothing that would shake me up. I just kept pushing and sighting. I wanted to make this a good one. The first half of the swim was pretty good. Visibility was not too good, but I managed to avoid being kicked (just barely few times) and I did not let the pullers from the back to shake my determination. If anything they realized that I have feet and can kick. Second loop was shorter than the first one and while I lost the feet I was drafting I was doing pretty good. From the last buoy I started kicking little more to help with transition to upright position and I was out of water few seconds short of 22 minutes. Pretty good for this course and I was pleased with it.

The T1 was fast since all I had to do was put on my helmet and go. I got into my bike shoes in the first kilometer or so once I got moving and passed the curvy part of the road. I felt pretty good on the bike and shortly settled into my rhythm. All was going well until I got to the first short climb where I shifted to easier gear which dropped my chain. I cursed something in my native language, stopped and thought I'm losing few seconds. Well not quite - the chain was looped around the inside of the chainring axle and also outside on the axle on the pedal side. God knows how that happened. Gently releasing the chain helped it after a while. I cleaned my hands on the wet grass and jumped back on my bike. Ready to go. At this point I lost about 3 minutes - nothing I can not make up on this course I thought. I started climbing the hill and bam - the chain kept skipping. I shifted to easier gear, adjusted front derailer position, skipping. Shifted to harder gear, still skipping. I went another few hundred meters and when the chain kept skipping I decided to go back to transition. I had spare set of wheels, but no spare chain or bike. So that was it for me for today.

I'm quite disappointed since I was doing real well and felt like I could have good race. After I packed all my stuff in the car Erica took me for a short run to calm down and chat a bit. We cheered on the other half riders as they were finishing their first loop. It was fun to see people racing and cheer them on. But next time I'm bringing spare bike to the race for cases like this one.

I'm hoping this was the last one of the little and big incidents that seem to have converged into this season. Well I'll just continue to roll with the punches and keep coming back for more. I'm ready to have a good race workout in our bi-weekly Grin and Bear It Wednesday race. Bring it on!

Hello new friend

2010-06-14T09:28:00.001-04:00

I admit being a HRM geek and as such I tend to test all new watches in the market. I found this unit in REI close to my home while I was there to pickup my new shoes. So far the unit is great - little large, but it is a watch with built in GPS, HRM capabilities, basic navigation, ANT+ compatibility and amazing way to configure.

I have played with it on the weekend and while the unit is not 100% there with functions I need it is very promising since Timex can update firmware just as Garmin units do. Plus this can actually be worn as a watch during the day which is what I really like.

Ray did a first look few days ago on

his blog and it is a very good read.

I would recomemd the unit to anyone who likes to try new things and likes to tinker with gadgets. I think Timex is few firmware updates away from having very solid unit for triathletes. On top of my list of missing features is footpod support for indoor running and upload of courses. If those are added I can thin out my HRM collection quite a bit.

One from the road

2010-06-11T22:48:00.001-04:00

With so much talk about security at the airport one thing puzzles me - how can the vendors sell manicure sets from stainless steel in the gate area. The following pictures were taken during my recent trip to Germany. The store is behind the security checkpoint where you nearly need to strip down. Pretty puzzling.

Fixing it up

2010-06-05T12:16:00.001-04:00

Just dropped off my bike at the bike shop for some love and fixes. Everything looks fine except the right brake lever that is shot. Considering the speed and length of the slide bike is in great condition.

Location:Hamilton Blvd,Upper Macungie,United States

44mph to 0 in 25 seconds or how I had my second bike crash

2010-05-30T15:45:00.001-04:00

Well the title says it all - I had second crash today - on my bike that is. I was doing a nice challenging 70-75 mile loop and I was enjoying myself until the last downhill. It was a steep one and I was going pretty good until I hit the wet part of the road in the woods and had to start breaking approaching a T intersection. Long story short in 25 seconds I went from flying down the hill 44mph (or about 70kph) to sliding on my side, arms, belly, the other side, helmet (luckily I had one) as the back wheel of the bike lost grip. It seemed like a split second, but according to my log it was a long 25 seconds slide. I'm all bandaged-up now. Luckily nothing got broken. Just many bruises and road rash. I'm seriously thinking about starting to shave my legs ;-).

I'll spare you the gross pictures of my bruises and instead offer picture of my soon to be replaced helmet. In the other news Ian had great kids triathlon race and we all got to participate - Dasa swam with him, Veronika ran by his side on the bike leg and I ran with him the two laps around the parking lot. Good times. Blog post coming soon.

How to race Aquavelo in triathlon event

2010-05-23T15:36:00.000-04:00

This morning was early raise - 4:30 alarm clock, small breakfast, strong coffee and off I was to Spruce run state park in NJ. It was the day of my aquavelo race as part of the Jerseyman half ironman triathlon.

I got to the park early, checked in, got body marked and setup my bike in transition - the usual morning pre-race ritual. After that I met with my friend Chris and after he got setup we went down to the water for warmup swim. Water was chilly, but not too bad and after few minutes of swimming I felt fine even with no sleeves on my wetsuit. After warmup we got out and waited for the start. We were both in the first wave and as usual with beach starts it was a mess until we reached the first buoy. I was actually sighting off of the very last buoy to avoid zig-zaging the course. There was some less experienced racer next to me who kept pushing me towards the second buoy so I slowed a little and let him go. No need to do that when there is a straight line to the very last buoy and all the other ones are on the left side as required by the race. After that incident I had very uneventful swim. Took a straight line to the last buoy, when I got there no one was around and before I rounded next corner there were only few people around and no one seemed interested to fight for position. No complaints from my side. The rest of the swim was ok and I pushed hard the whole way around as planned - goal was to swim strong and steady. Got out after little over 32 minutes and the swim seemed little long to me.

Before getting out of water I made a decision - since my ankle is not ok and i will have dnf there is really no point in running in T1. So I just walked from the beach to porta potties and the to my bike. My T1 time was something like 6 and half minutes. But that did nit worry me. At least I'll have people to pick off on the bike.

When I got on my bike I started executing the race plan - ride hard. About mile into the race I got into my shoes and it was hammer time. Just like on my fartlek rides I attacked pretty much every hill and rode hard on the straights. I did not keep count of people I passed, but I made my way through the field and when I rolled back into transition after 2:36 in the saddle there were only 8 other bikes on the racks. So even with my lousy transition I did pretty well. Lucky for me that was the end of my day. Not sure how well I would have run after that ride. According to my power meter I had averaged power 20 watts below my threshold so the run would probably suck.

In any case I'm very happy with the outcome and the swim and bike splits I recorded. This gives me hope that I may indeed do a sub-5 half this season. I hope to build up the run volume before IMRI and do that there.

Getting ready for my first DNF race

2010-05-22T19:05:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow is my first half iron race of this season and I know going into it that I'll end up with my first ever DNF. How do I know? Well my ankle has been probed and checked multiple times. I had MRI done about 2 weeks ago and then few days later I saw specialist who made few remarks - one word he repeated several times looking at my MRI was 'IMPRESSIVE' which is not a very good sign when doctor looks at the pictures of your bones, ligaments and soft tissue.

That consultation was pretty scary for me as I really like to run. During the discussion with the doctor I learned about lose piece of bone in my heel (which is not a problem), few ligament tears around my ankle (which is likely caused by few ankle sprains and I should not worry about it much) and last which is more scary is swollen bone right under my ankle. That is the cause of all the pain I have been going through during and post runs. I have that bone slightly enlarged on my both feet which is genetical and should not cause issues. But the one on my right leg has swollen which causes some extra rubbing on the ligaments in that area and running is what irritates it. So I have been off running for over 4 weeks now and I have 4 more to go. Let me qualify that - I was not running on the roads, treadmill or anywhere else but the deep pool. I started to actually enjoy (if you can imagine that) my short runs in the pool - especially when Craig has me do some harder intervals. I get a lot of stares and few people wonder whether I'm trying to swim or what the heck I do. I got a lot of stares in Orlando when I went to the 50m pool and ran up and down the 50m lane while people in other lanes were swimming. Long explaining to do and they understood once I started swimming my cooldown 200 meters ;-).

So my ankle is the reason why I will be bailing after the bike tomorrow. I will much rather enjoy more years of triathlon than having one more race and then possibly surgery. Good thing in all this is that I can still swim and bike so we have been doing some more serious work in the pool and on the bike. We will see tomorrow how that is working out. I expect the swim to be pretty good and on the bike I'll be somewhat limited as I should not be standing up even on the hills so I'll need to grind up those two or three hills we have on the course.

Good luck to all my EnMu peers racing this weekend and also to all of you jumping into races over this weekend.

Movescount.com - new on-line log for Suunto owners

2010-05-01T13:21:00.001-04:00

Early in 2010 I have been invited by Suunto to take part in the testing of new service they have been working on and just few days ago unveiled to public. It is the Movescount.com service that lets owners of Suunto Tx line or X10 line log their activities. The service is free for all users and you can use it even without owning Suunto watch. But frankly there may be other optons that are better in such situation - like TrainingPeaks free account or other free services.

This new service is a really good news for Suunto owners on both PC and Mac as Suunto now released software to download data from the watch to their web service on both Windows and Mac OS X. That is probably the biggest news for users that are waiting for Mac version of Suunto Training Manager or Suunto Trek Manager.

Suunto really emphasizes the social aspect of the site and lets you link pictures from Flickr and videos from YouTube to your 'moves'. You can then share your moves page with friends on Facebook, MySpace, Google, mail, Twitter and other social networks.

If you own Suunto unit and want to migrate from their PC based software on-line this is the way to go. Especially if you are Mac user and were running the software in virtual machine. I like the fact that Suunto lets you load our old logs from STrM to the web to get started. Very nice - I wish Polar did this for the PPT5 (ideally both ways). In any case if you do not use on-line log, own Suunto and want new on-line log check it out.

Well that did not last long

2010-05-01T07:51:00.001-04:00

Plans are great, but life events can change them quickly. I was planning to do a duathlon race that is to start in about 45 minutes - well I'll not be racing today. Poor Ian has been throwing up the whole night so I decided to stay home with him and Dasa. Change of plans seems to be the theme of this racing season. There is a positive in this though - my ankle has been healing, but I'm not 100% sure what is with it. On Monday I should hear results of MRI that I had last night. So if anything is torn I will be in better not racing on it ... always finding positives in life's happenings. I hope your weekend is shaping up better than ours. I really hope this stomach bug will be gone soon and Ian will be back in biking shape soon.

Getting ready for the weekend

2010-04-30T08:38:00.000-04:00

I have been going through some rough time with my ankle as I reported few weeks ago. Last week I have pulled out of a half marathon race and continued my recovery - I have been doing lots of biking, swimming and water running lately. I'm happy to report that things are starting to look up.

This coming weekend I'll be racing in a short course duathlon not too far from my home and I hope to have good race. It is a regular 5k run - 14mi bike and 5k run. Not necessarily my format (now I would prefer abou 2 mi swim, 60mi bike and 2mi run given my training focus ;-).
I'm really looking forward to the race. Then on Sunday I'll be volunteering at the local Tough Mudder race (google it).
Good luck to all of you racing this weekend and I hope you have weather as great as what we expect (80F in the afternoon).

Location:Mallard Ln,Coopersburg,United States

My long time running buddy is no more

2010-04-29T20:02:00.001-04:00

I was sad the other day when I found my great running and bike trainer buddy struggling to start and charge. I had this one since I started exercising back in 2005 and it has been with me on three continents and in countless countries. Oh well I'll miss you buddy - your replacement will be here next week. Until then I'll be sweating into my iPhone ;-).

Friday evening fun with the family

2010-04-25T19:51:00.001-04:00

Posted via web from musiljan's posterous

Garmin, Suunto, Polar and Timex new gadgets and updates

2010-03-29T09:50:00.001-04:00

Looks like GPS is becoming more pervasive in fitness watches - Garmin today announced new running watch Garmin Forerunner 110 that will bring GPS to what seems like more basic watch than FR205, FR305, FR405 and FR310xt. Main theme seems to be simplicity with high level of accuracy. They will be showing the units at the major marathons in Boston, Paris and London so the watch seems to be geared to runners, walkers and joggers. For triathletes it seems that the 310xt remains the flagship.

Triathletes are probably looking forwards to the release of the new Timex unit that is the first version of Timex watch with built in GPS. They already have experience with GPS technology, but never had it integrated in the watch. We will see how well this will be done. From available information the unit will be ANT+ compatible so if you have ANT+ compatible power meter or HR belt the watch should be able to communicate with them.

Polar is releasing new sleek cycling computer CS500 that is based on their proprietary W.I.N.D. technology used in CS600 and RS800/RS800cx lines of products. The design looks very clever for cycling - I hate switching displays on CS600 especially when I wear my gloves and I'm in traffic. The rocker design seems to make it all very easy. Not sure though if I upgrade. The announcement on Polar site does not list power meter as one of the compatible accessories which is a shame. I hope it will work with it since I'm getting another Polar power unit I found few days ago so I can put it on my new road bike.

And last news is from Suunto that is releasing new designs of T6 line with release of three new color schemes and different packaging under the T6d name. According to their announcement the new units will ship in few weeks and will include the dual belt, but otherwise seem to be exactly the same as T6c. The new designs are Black Flame - black yellow (pictured), Black Smoke (Black and gray) and Black Fusion (Fusion with black housing - as opposed to the greenish one that currently ships). So unless you die to spend over 400 bucks for different design of the watch there is really not much new in terms of technology or functionality. Still the units look very good.

Slow return to running

2010-03-29T00:55:00.001-04:00

My return from the log run fail from few weeks back has been somewhat slow. But I think I'm on the way back. Last week I did whole 1 hour on track - long run on the track is only little less boring than long run on treadmill. But I was happy to have completed it. The bad part was that the ankle felt sad after the run. So I narrowed it down to the Newtons and my significant supination. On Monday after the long run I went to local running store that sponsors our club to get fitted for more significant shoes for training. I ended-up getting Saucony ProGrid Ride 2 that are neutral shoes. I added Powerstep inserts to make up for my high arches. Now I have run two times withe them and did not have any significant issues with the ankle. Things seem to be coming back. On Friday I did 20 minutes test run outside which felt good and today I did 1 hour on treadmill - still sticking to softer surfaces. Things are definitely looking up considering I did a long bike ride yesterday and did not have any ankle issues. The season opener Duathlon is in two weeks and I hope to be back to normal by then and hopefully will restore some of the fitness I lost by not running as much.

Thank you everyone for well wishes and notes of encouragement. Things are definitely looking much better than few weeks ago.

Ian practicing

2010-03-28T10:38:00.001-04:00

Posted via web from musiljan's posterous

Testing out the new bike

2010-03-26T01:05:00.001-04:00

Well I'm not the only person in our house who got a new bike. Ian got one too - nice blue bike with shiny training wheels. We have been riding our bikes every day since Monday when we got it. It was at least 30 minutes each day and yesterday he managed a full hour. He really likes this new bike and keeps telling everyone we meet on the street how cool his new bike is.

Going against the fad

2010-03-23T16:36:00.002-04:00

Over the past few days I had done little research and consulted with few people about my ankle issues. There seems to be two issues at play - one is that I'm supinator (pretty serious one - if you check my older shoes you can see that I wear the outside only, saving the other half for later). Second issue is that I have been running in very minimal shoes for the past 2 years and it seems to have irritated a bone right under my ankle. Nothing structural, but painful nonetheless. So going forward I'm moving from minimal shoes to more significant trainers with more cushioning - at least for training or until the ankle pain gets under control. Yesterday I bought new pair of Saucony running shoes - still neutral shoe, but more cushioned trainer and fitted them with new Powerstep insert. We will see if that helps a bit - from the short run I did in them (and other three different shoes) the more cushioned shoes seem like something I need now. So let's hope things stabilize enough over the next few days so I can resume proper training. Until then I'll keep enjoying my new bike and swimming.

While everyone seems to be talking about minimal shoes I'll be going my own way and move to more significant shoe for at least next few weeks ;-).

New addition to my stable

2010-03-19T14:02:00.002-04:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Few days ago I Found a big box on my porch. I was waiting for it for few days after I made purchase at Competitive Cyclist website. They had a great deal on BMC team machine bike that just seemed to be too good to pass up. More so since I was in market for new road bile which is one kind I miss in my stable.
The bike arrived on Wednesday and was packed very well. It took me about 30 minutes to unwrap it and put it together.
I have yet to get fitted on it (that is today's plan) and take it out for a ride. But I'm already liking the machine.
I also want to give props to Competitive Cyclist guys that provided a great service. They were extremely helpful in advising the right frame size for my needs based on my self measurement and existing bike fit and they let me use free shipping coupon for purchase although I applied it after the physical purchase. Overall great experience.

Posted via web from musiljan's posterous

Quiet evening

2010-03-16T20:24:00.001-04:00

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Long run - fail

2010-03-14T21:41:00.001-04:00

Today's long run left me with two ankles on my left leg. It started already last week after the Quakertown 10 miler. The ankle got better during the week, but today's long run brought the second ankle back. The picture is taken after 20 minutes of icing. Let's hope compression and more icing will do the work.

Posted via web from musiljan's posterous

Quakertown 10mi

2010-03-07T01:33:00.001-05:00

See the full gallery on posterous

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Motivation for down day

2010-03-04T17:27:00.004-05:00

I have been sick as a dog today. My training log has a big zero for yesterday and most likely same figure for today. I found this video that Matty Reed posted on his twitter feed very motivating - it is great to see the best athletes in the sport hammer it out in Olympic distance race.

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Rasmus Henning: Great athlete

2010-03-03T13:00:00.002-05:00

In all the noise in Kona about Crowie beating Lieto by only few minutes there was one competitor that we did not hear much about although it was his first Kona and he did it while injured. Pretty amazing what Rasmus showed on the big island. I was already amazed with his performance when I saw NBC special about Ironman China where he won despite it being his first iron distance race and despite the grueling conditions. It looks like more ITU guys are making the transition to Ironman racing. We will see if that translates into faster times in Kona and other Ironman races. I definitely recommend watching the embedded video from Ironman that was recorded before Kona race last year.

Posted via web from musiljan's posterous

Is this for real or is my grocery shop pulling my leg

2010-03-01T20:07:00.001-05:00

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Biggest week this year yet

2010-02-28T21:51:00.001-05:00

I have not posted about my training in a while. Reasons are the usual - family, work, training and general lack of time to get to blogging. I have started using posterous this past week and hope to have better ability to post shorter updates to posterous and have them replicated to this blog.In any case this week has been the biggest TSS wise so far. I have done my longest run this year (about 400m shy of 15 miles) and some good swimming. This is the first week back in the States after spending 2 weeks in Germany. It was great to be out in Germany and do some workouts in different environment - different pool, new gym and some great running in snowy German country side on the weekend. But I must admit that I'm glad to be back home on my own bike. I no longer need to mess around with position for 20 minutes to dial it in for every session as I did on spin bike in Germany. I do not miss the free for all swimming in the pool - this particular one had sore lack of lanes and swimming through bunch of people and weaving around them was more of a challenge than a good swim. I really enjoyed swim this past Wednesday with my group where we were only two guys in the lane and knew how to share it. And the hot gyms in Europe are just plain weird - time for the designers to learn about air-conditioning. It is no fun to do 60 minutes worth of hill sprints on treadmill where temperature is like during nice summer day. Although I seem to complain about this I'm actually glad my company has a gym in Europe and that the pool was only 10 minutes away from the office and was opened until 10pm.But back to this week - it started with easy recovery after the weekend hill sprints and then slowly ramped up with swims, bike sessions and runs to long run on Saturday in which I covered some 14.75 miles with some serious hills. The first race of this season pointed out some weakness in my hill form so Craig added some more serious hill training on regular basis. This seems to help quite a bit. This Saturday's long run while I had some issues with fueling and getting water on the way I'm really happy with the performance on the hills. I attacked every single hill and took the run on purpose through some serious climbs to see how I fare. While my average pace was 8:50 for the whole run the normalized graded pace was more like 8:15 which is really good for this time of the year.Well we will see how good my hill skills are next weekend during the Quakertown 10 miler which is a great race near my home that takes place over some nicely rolling terrain and sports some good climbs. Should be fun. I wonder whether I can beat my last year's time.

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First Night 5k Bethlehem PA

2010-01-03T21:58:00.001-05:00

I first though that my last run was the Christmas City Classic 5 miles, but there was another local race - the First Night 5k I decided to jump into. Mostly because pretty good number of endurance multisport club were racing. So I took it as opportunity to see few friends before the year is over. The race is a 5k loop in Bethlehem that starts at the ice skate center in downtown and loops over the river, to Main street, down to the river, over to Sand Island for little loop and then back over the bridge to the ice skate center. Fun part about the race was that we got about 2 inches of fresh snow that morning and while it turned into slushy paddles in most areas there were spots where it was still snow that was quite slippery especially in my Newtons.

This was second run race I ran mostly by feel and looked at my watch only I think two or three times in the entire race. I ran at the pace that felt hard enough for 5k, but paid attention on the snowy patches and slowed down to almost walk as the grip in Newtons is virtually non-existent. Still I felt like I put pretty good effort and deserved all the goodness we had later in the day - all the good meats, wine and cookies.

Below is picture of the endurance multisport crew that ran the race - Jes finished second overall and Andrew has shiny new PR and he ran the race in jeans (did not plan on running it, but changed his mind at the last minute). So with this picture I wish all my club peeps great 2010 season.

What's new in WKO+ 3.0

2010-01-03T20:35:00.001-05:00

I thought that instead of writing about my summary of 2009 and plans for 2010 I'll do something else - write about something that literally made my day in few weeks ago in 2009. I was on business trip in Europe and while running from one meeting to another I got call that my other meeting was cancelled so I sat down in one of the many coffee corners we have in that office and checked my mail. To my surprise I had new mail from TrainingPeaks that new release of WKO+ was available. Knowing that I have only few minutes I quickly checked release notes and after finding about new features I purchased upgrade and downloaded the update file. Later in the day when I was done with work I performed the upgrade and started reviewing the new features. By the way the upgrade was easy and took only about 20 minutes including migration of all my training history from past 3 years. The software itself looks very good, but I had very little time while on business trip so I postponed more detailed review until I get back home.

When I got back few days later I found invite to free WKO+ seminar led by Hunter Allen that was very helpful in helping me understand how to use the software for further analysis of the workouts. The most important enhancements in my mind are the multi-file/range analysis, scatter graphs and quadrant analysis for power files. For the end user the interface seems little cleaner and the seamless integration with TrainingPeaks logging software is a welcome enhancement - not only you can upload data to TrainingPeaks.com account, but if you load data directly to web you can download them back to WKO+. This is useful when you are on trip and do not have WKO+ available to you which happens quite often to me when I go on vacation. And last but not least enhancement is the flexible licensing that let's you use your copy of WKO+ on up to two machines - great for users that have one copy on their work computer and one on home PC or laptop.

While I like all of these features I really use the multi-range analysis and scatter graph for my run and bike workouts. I use quadrant analysis for my power files as well. Great is that you can look at scatter graph or quadrant analysis inside multi-range analysis - more about that later.

Let me demonstrate the multi-range analysis on two examples - first one is training run where after warm-up you do 10 times 30 seconds on / 1 minute off intervals where the on interval is very fast running and the 1 minute is rest jog. Purpose of this session is to work on running form that you can measure by achieved average speed and average cadence in the 'on' intervals. Once I loaded the log file to WKO+ I selected all the 'on' intervals and created multi-range analysis out of it that looks something like this.

Each variable like HR, cadence, speed is plotted in separate graph and each range has different color. Once you have the multi-range analysis in place you can use the bottom part of the screen to sort the ranges by different variables - like average speed or average cadence. From the analysis you can see that the first interval was pretty fast, but the fourth was fastest while my average cadence was pretty slow on the first one (94) and gradually improved over the subsequent intervals. The detail for cadence is below.

And detail for speed follows:

In similar fashion you can analyze longer sessions or different sessions performed on different days - like comparing your speed / pace / cadence in your tempo run or track workout. This is very useful and provides great insight into how you performed in the workout.

Now let's look at another example - this one if from ChesapeakeMan AquaVelo - well the velo part of the race - e.g. 112 miles of biking that consisted of two loops (second one being shorter). I setup multi-range analysis for the loops to evaluate how well I paced the race - e.g. did I die towards the end or was I able to keep about the same power through out the race. Were there major spikes and how did I generate the power. All these questions can be answered quite easily with WKO+. Let's look at few of the graphs from this multi-range analysis.

The first picture shows the multi-range analysis where the first loop is in yellow and second loop in red. From the power ranges below the graps you can see that pacing was pretty good - +/-5 watts in power and +/-3 watts in normalized power. That is what I was aiming for.

Now let's look at how I generated that power - this is what quadrant analysis can help with. The quadrant analysis basically graphs how fast your pedal moves vs. average effective force applied to pedal (as calculated by the software). With this graph you can see how you generated the power you were putting out - e.g. fast spinning vs. mashing pedals. Here is how TrainingPeaks designed the quadrants in the software - QI: High Force and High Cadence - An example of this would be sprinting; QII: High Force and Low Cadence - An example would be steep hill repeats, big gear intervals and a lot of Mt. Biking resides in QII as well; QIII: Low Force and Low Cadence - An example would be a recovery ride or just an easy ride around town; QIV: Low Force and High Cadence - An example would be a Criterium or fast pedaling drills. The following two graphs show the two loops with the power data brought to foreground for first loop and then second loop - next to each quadrant indicator you can see average % of all power for the whole ride and for the selected range.

If you look at the two pictures above (you may actually need to go to pull the image on your desktop or enlarge it in your browser to see the detail) the power is mostly generated in QIV - low force high cadence and QII low force low cadence (read as below 90 rpm, but if you look closely the cadence is not all that low). I did some work in big gear against the wind on both loops that show in QII. It is interesting to look at the ride in this format and look not only at how well I stayed in the planned power ranges, but also consider how I generated the power.

These are the features that I started using right away and continue to use them in my training analysis. If you want to learn more I suggest to review replay of the seminar about WKO+ that you can find here. Or review information about WKO+ on TrainingPeaks.com.

One day I'll be here

2009-12-28T20:57:00.001-05:00

NXTRI09_Jorgen_Melau_BEST-17
Originally uploaded by NXTRI

This is on my list of cool races - Norseman Tri. I hope to make it here before I hit 40 - or in the year I hit 40. Looks like a very challenging race.

Recap of last few months

2009-12-27T20:17:00.001-05:00

It has been a while since I posted on this page. Few things kept getting in the way - buildup for marathon in Philly, family time and work - the usual mix for every age grouper. So instead of stressing about another thing I decided to keep the blog on the back burner until I can get back to it. My apology to all readers that missed my regular posts. I can not make any promises other than that I'll keep posting as my other responsibilities and hobbies allow.

Philadelphia Marathon

This year I kept Philly Marathon on my schedule as A-race with proper build-up and taper just like last year. The build-up was very good coming out of the tri season we switched to a lot more and longer running. Most of my training runs were spot on and I had lots of confidence going into Philly. I did have a great race, but marathon still kicked my bottom. I have not made as huge mistake as I did last year, but I still paced the first half little too fast and had a prime experience of hitting the wall in Manayunk. Luckily I was not reduced to walking and could still keep running all the way back to the museum to the finish line. Only my pace was not as fast as I wanted it. I still got a huge PR - over 20 minutes which I'm quite happy with. My finish time was 3:33 and change which is few minutes shy of my goal. I could probably break down the race for you, but it is not very interesting - fast first few miles (not by much, but still above where I should have been running) and then gradual slow down until mile 18. From there on lots of mental games and pushing through pain to get to the finish - sprinting up the hill was really only a 9:30 pace which was just a result of the carb depletion and dehydration. The usual marathon story. So marathon stays on my list of things to master, but not next year. More about that later.

Christmas City Classic

Besides small 5k Turkey Trot I ran just a week after marathon (ran not raced) I did race the regular 5 mile Christmas City Classic in Bethlehem which is a nice local race with many runners dressed-up in Christmas costumes. Very nice event if you live near Bethlehem PA. I ran the entire race by feel with few glances on my watch to check immediate pace. I did mess-up my calibration on purpose so the pace was showing about 30 seconds per mile slower than what I was running. I used this strategy in previous races to push my pace in triathlon and it works as well in running race. I improved my last years time by about 50 seconds which is a nice improvement of 10 seconds per mile. Not bad. My running definitely improved this year and still has some way to go.

Next year planning

As I finished Philly and started to think about next season I decided that it is not going to be Ironman distance season just yet. I feel like the long stuff makes me slower - the buildup for marathon was good, but I really felt like I lost my speed (the one I had during the top events in the season - just around the Anthracite Tri and Quakerman Half). In one local very small 5k I was unable to run faster than 6:55-7:00 which is my 10k race pace. This is understandable since we did not work on this system as much prior to that race and only got into intervals in the marathon buildup. So after some very short thinking I told Craig and Erica that next season my focus will be on Half and Olympic distance and that I want to really work on my speed in all three disciplines - especially run. With that I picked two A-races - IM 70.3 Rhode Island and Savageman half. The rest of the season includes some build-up run races like Superbowl 10k in Feb, local duathlon in April, Lehigh Valley Half Marathon, IM 70.3 Eagleman, and few local Olympic races. So instead long steady stuff I'm getting ready for short fast training sessions with lots of pain, hard track sessions that I enjoyed so much (even if I complained) and fun shorter racing. I'm really looking forward to it.

I hope you all have great holidays and happy New Year. Keep safe while training and racing.

ChesapeakeMan AquaVelo - longest swim and ride of my life

2009-09-29T23:44:00.001-04:00

This past weekend I took my family down to Cambridge Maryland to be with me when I raced the AquaVelo race during the ChesapeakeMan festival of races. Along side the full Ironman distance race there is an option to swim 2.4 mile (the aqua option) or swim and bike (aqua velo option - the race I was doing). This was actually very first attempt at swimming 2.4 miles and biking 112 miles. The longest ride leading up to this race was about 80 miles on the rolling hills around my house and the longest swim I ever did was the 1.2 miles in half iron races. But I had no doubt going into this race that if I paced the event well I will finish in good position.

We left the house on Friday morning to make it down to the race venue in time to pickup the packet, check-in the bike, get groceries, and get some sleep before the long day.

We got to Cambridge around little after the time when the transition opened and after picking up the race packet we made our way to the transition. I checked the bike, made sure the new batteries in power meter work and took the bike for short spin up and down the road. Ian made sure my pedals worked so I can get through the whole 112 miles on the bike. Then I just dropped off the bike at my rack.

Ian had a blast with Dasa and Lada and he even went with me to check out the swim buoys that were already in the water ready for the morning swim. The swim did not look all that long - I guess I got used to the idea of longer swims. My only concern was the wind for both the swim and bike.

Then it was time to check out the swim to bike transition rack where we will put our bike gear. Ian actually tested my bike helmet and got very aero before we went to the hotel to get some late lunch.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful - trip to the hotel, lunch and pre-race meeting where we heard a bit about the course and how the day is planned out to unfold. Then it was time to mix my drinks for next day and get to bed. Surprisingly I slept well and got pretty solid 5.5 hours of sleep. Which is always good.

Next morning Dasa drove me to Cambridge to the race start, I setup my bike and got ready for the start. Wind picked up quite a bit from the day before which meant that both swim and bike will be interesting. Still I did not mind it at all - I did swim in this area before and was ready for pretty bad conditions. This seemed like a mild version of what I was expecting. Around 6 Dasa took off to catch some more ZZZs and make sure Ian is OK. I just went through my pre-race routine - walk the transition, take care of my business and suit up for the swim. I met with few friends from my local races, said hello and wished good luck in the long day ahead of us. Erica and Craig arrived as well as did my buddies Chris and Herb. Erica and Craig were doing the full iron distance race (Erica as part of relay with her sister Katie) and both Chris and Herb raced AquaVelo with me.

Shortly before 7am we were directed to the water which was very nice and generally warmer than the air outside - especially in the wetsuit. Few seconds after 7am the gun went off and we were under way. I took Erica's advice and made sure to start at the pace I expected to swim through the whole race. No sprinting from the crowd - I left that to other people. The swim is two loops of triangular course. First leg was easy as we swam with the current and wind, only towards the end of the leg the waves started to pick-up. They were more significant after turn buoy and even more significant on the way back. But I just found the right rhythm and kept sighting. It was pretty hard at times and I found myself swimming to the start buoy instead of the turn buoy. Luckily one of the kayakers yelled at me and I corrected my direction. I probably lost few minutes with this, but that made me sight even more on the second loop which was almost perfect. I swam the out leg pushing little more and had someone draft of off me - I did not mind someone drafting, but I was not happy with him touching my feet with every stroke. That was just not cool. I decided not to pay attention to it - since I'll probably shake him after the turn buoy - which actually happened. On the way back I kept sighting little more and swam to the right buoy before returning back to the water exit. I exited the water at 1:08:55 which is pretty good swim time for the conditions we were facing. I'm not sure what my place was after the swim, but by the first turnaround (10 miles) on the bike I was in 22nd place. But let's not get too much ahead.

Transition was pretty good - I ran on the wrong side of the rack, but did not lose much time with that. Then I was in changing tent taking off my wetsuit and putting on my helmet. I stuck my wetsuit to my transition bag, ran to my bike rack and was on my way. The transition was about 2:20, but I do not know for sure as my watch switched off about 3 minutes into the swim - I probably hit someone with my hand and stopped the watch. I did not really mind it as race takes the splits from the chip (luckily my chip did not die on the swim, but did on the bike).

I started my bike computer before crossing the mat to have proper time for the bike leg. I was aiming to complete the 112 miles in 5 hours and 15 minutes which meant about 21.5 - 21.7 mph through out. The course is pancake flat so this is very doable if the wind is not too strong. The plan was to take the first 20 miles easy as a warm-up to settle into the position, then bump up the power output a little and hold it for the first whole loop (up to about 64 miles) and then increase the effort and keep pushing to the finish. I did not have to run (well at least not in the race) so I could afford to push higher wattage than in the full race.

Even on my warm-up out and back 20 miles I moved-up few positions and at the turnaround I was about 10-12 minutes down on the leaders and in about 22nd place which was a good position this early in the race. On the way out we were really moving - with little power output we were all doing comfortable 26 mph - it was after turnaround that we had to fight the wind and the speed immediately dropped to 21 mph with higher power output - even in perfect aero position. Poor guys that were already tired at that point and were stretching out or rode upright like sails. I did not know where I was relative to the AquaVelo folks and while my goal was to finish in the top 10 I knew the best way to reach that goal is to stick to the race plan. And I did. I had no interest in chasing people or fighting for position. I got into the few packs - well we all rode legally, but you have 2-4 guys constantly trading places and pacing off of each other. That makes the miles fly by like nothing. The wind seemed quite OK on the first 20-30 miles, but when we turned to the marshes it seemed to beat at us from all directions. At times I had to come out of aero to grab my handlebars to keep the bike from running off the road. According to some people there were wind gusts of 20 mph at times and pretty constant wind of 10mph. I was actually very happy to be done with the first loop and I was not disappointed missing to see my family as I finished the loop about 10 minutes faster than planned.

As I started the second loop of the remaining 48 miles things started to get uncomfortable - it was tough to find comfortable position on the seat, aero was not comfortable either. But I knew if I wanted to be fast I had to stay aero as much as possible so I forced myself stick in aero position and only stretched from time to time. The worst part of the second loop were miles 70-80 - that is the gray area of the race. You are not close to finish to start counting down the miles and mind can play games with you. I was determined to keep pushing especially after being passed by fellow AquaVelo competitor that probably stopped for special needs bag (I did not as I treated special needs bag as bag for case something went wrong on loop 1 - I was good after loop 1 so I just blew by the special needs area). Shortly after being passed I saw that there was another AquaVelo competitor ahead. So I stuck close to the guy that passed me and we caught up to Herb. It was good to see fellow EnMu athlete and we exchanged few pleasantries as we traded places. We pushed each other quite nicely for the next about 7-10 miles and completely lost contact with the man that brought us together. I kept my pace going and after few miles I checked if Herb is still behind me and found he was falling back a little. I just stuck to my plan and as I was getting close to mile 90 I opened up the pace even more. Now the goal was to break 5 hours mark. It was entirely possible to do it since I still had time to get to the finish with about 30-40 seconds to spare. So I concentrated on pushing hard, staying aero and keeping my back relaxed with regular stretching every few miles. I blew past few competitors that were finishing their first loop and encouraged most of them to keep pushing to the finish. The cutoff was still some 4 hours away so they had plenty of time to finish the bike leg. I rolled past the last aid station, took water and kept pushing. It was only few miles to the finish. I was almost like in a dream - you may know the out of body experience when everything just seems going well and you do not even notice the effort you are putting out on the bike - fluid state. This stuck with me all the way to the finish. I was actually little sad that the day is done for me. I did indeed get my sub-5 hours bike split - with about 25 seconds to spare (not sure of the exact time from the chip as it died on me, but my bike computer shows clearly that I stopped moving my bike before 5 hours were over on the bike.

After I finished I was greeted by my family and the race director who handed me 5th overall award for the AquaVelo - great I like being 5th more than being 10th. It will have prominent place in my library next to all the other AG and overall awards from the past few years of racing. I was genuinely pleased with the result.

And well then it was time to tie on my shoes and go for a nice jog with new found friends - David who finished before me and his wife who were doing transition run as well.

The run did not go all that well - first mile was fine, then I got some GI issues and then my head started to spin - I seriously did not fuel for run after bike and it was time to get back to the finish line and get some food before collapsing. Pizza did me good and I was ready to go for some serious meal. We packed my stuff and headed over to next town over to get some pasta and meat - carbs and protein is always good after races. I felt like a pig - I ate everything I saw. No wonder I burned some 4500 - 5000 calories in the race so I needed to refuel. Since then I kind of toned down my eating, but I seem to be in this pig out mode since the weekend.

It was great to spend the afternoon with my family, have quite dinner and then just chill in our hotel room. My legs were hurting like hell on the day of the race, but they got better on Sunday and I had almost no residual soreness on Monday. I love AquaVelo races - I was less beat up than after half iron race. And as usual here are few pictures showing the blast Ian had at the race - he was so happy the whole weekend. It was great watching him - and he actually slept from 4pm on Sunday all the way to 8am on Monday. So in a way he had his race as well.

Quakerman 70.3 - rainy day at the lake with great finale

2009-09-18T21:56:00.001-04:00

About a week before the race it looked like we will have some light sunshine and pleasant 70's for the run. It was not to be - the weather forecast changed from partly cloudy to cloudy and then to rainy over the 2-3 days before the race. Oh well I thought - another wet one which seems to be the rule this season. I was hoping this will not turn into duathlon and at least that prayer was heard and we did have a full tri.

I'll spare you all the details about my waking time and eating habits. After I got on site I got quickly body marked - only on my hand which I did not like much. I prefer knowing who just passed me especially if I can not see if they are in my race or the olympic race. Oh well I guess they did not have enough volunteers to do proper body marking. After that I went back to my car to get my stuff and setup transition. I picked spot close to bike exit right next to Lenny and across the aisle from Chris - my EnMu buddies. While we were getting setup we were being checked by the USAT referee - well our helmets that is. Funny is that the same referee gave Chris hard time during Steelman and we were joking about it just before she showed up. It all turned up to be good fun and she actually came back once again to tell me jokingly that she needs to check the helmet again just as we were getting ready for practice swim.

I got into my wetsuit, stuck extra ear plug into the wetsuit in case I lose the ones I have in my ears - last OWS was a big learning - I got such motion sickness without ear plug that I almost passed out in calm lake after I lost one of my ear plugs. The water was cold for my taste, but after 400m warm-up it got better. I was ready to go. Just before the start I said hi to Leah and Garen who were doing the Olympic distance and came to check out our start. Then it was time to rock - went to the water, lined up up front and took the inside line. After the horn I went ahead and pushed quite a bit to get out of the pack. Well that lasted a little while, but once we got to the first buoy I got in the middle of few people and had to speed up again. Then I got caught in between two guys and could not go through or around them. At that point my HR was too high so I decided to let it settle by swimming on my back for about 30-60 seconds. Once I regrouped I continued freestyle only little more paced. At the second turn we turned back against the wind and pretty good chop. I had to stop once or twice to check where we are swimming as sighting was not easy in these conditions. But I remembered the Chesapeake mile swim and the chop was not all that bad. Well it was washing over my head and I swallowed some water before I got into the rhythm. On the second lap it was much calmer - less people to fight with and I was able to settle into my pace and just keep going without any breaks. I exited the water about 2 minutes slower than I planned, but given conditions it was an OK swim. Based on results I had 11th swim out of the 90 finishers. Not bad. Definitely an improvement from last year where I was further back even though I had great swim. I guess the hours in the pool are showing some results. I still have to have a stellar swim though.

After fairly fast transition - slower than usual as I was getting my arm warmers for the bike - I was biking out of the park and pacing myself up the hill. Poor guy I passed on that hill he was clearly struggling on the incline I wonder how he did on all the other hills especially on the RT313 climb that can be a bitch especially the third time around. Unfortunately my bike prep was not stellar for this race and I forgot to check my power meter - it did not work. Oh well what can I do I'll just go by feel. I have done enough riding on these hills to know when I'm pushing over threshold and when I'm slacking off. So I went. The race loops three times around lake Nockamixon which is rolling hills course with few good climbs. I wanted to do the first loop little more conservatively, then second loop little harder and third loop little bit harder than second. But not too hard to kill my legs before the run. Tough balance to keep on these climbs even with power meter. I was hoping for 21.5 - 21.8 average speed on the course in dry conditions. Wet roads make for slightly slower bike as I do not risk as much on the bike since the last year wipe out during JerseyMan that put me out of training for few weeks. It is not worth it. I ended-up averaging 20.8 over the 56 miles which is about mile per hour slower than I wanted, but it still gave me 3rd fastest bike split of the day. There was some wind and rain so people were not as fast as in dry conditions. Plus there was a lot of debree on the roads from the rain storms we had few days before the race. Also quite a few people ended up with flat tire (one poor guy actually had two flats and still finished in top 10 - great run for him - his legs got a good break waiting for the sag wagon with technician). After the race I noticed that I was about 1 mm away from flat myself. I got a sharp rock stuck in my tire and it went all the way to casing of the tubular - yeah big luck for me.

Transition two was fast - just got my socks, shoes and off I went. After the experience during Patriot's tri I will not do any run longer than 10k sock-less. That Patriot's run was the most stupid idea of this season resulting in blisters that took about week to heal. My goal for the run was to keep pace between 7:50 and 8:00 minute mile. First half a mile was a huge struggle as my quads were hurting from the bike and the left one was really bad. Luckily as I was closing on second mile most of the pain went away and I was able to run solid pace even on the uphills. I focused on good form, breathing and pacing myself - it is a long run and as I learned during the BlackBear you will only hurt yourself if you try to go out too fast. Even on downhills I was sure not to go much faster than 7 minute mile. Surprisingly I felt great after the first 3.25 miles (first turnaround).

I was in second place (well technically third, but the girl running in front of me was part of relay). I felt great the half of the second loop and only stated to fade after the turnaround - well time to get the boost - I took three salt tables and chewed them - yuk it was nasty, but helped a bit. I washed them down with gel water mix and in about 2 minutes I was back in the game. Unfortunately just at that point when I was starting mile 12 the guy behind me made his move and passed me. He was going much too fast for me to sustain the pace for 2 miles (we still had about 2 miles to the finish at this point). So I just kept my pace and focused on my race. After aid station where I got last cup of water I saw him about 50 meters in front of me and kept him in my sight for next mile. Then I lost contact completely. But that was OK I was running my race at that point and I knew I had only one more mile to go - so I opened it up and ran what seemed like 7 minute mile - all the way to the finish. If anything I was picking up speed and not slowing thanks to friend of mine who was cooling down on the race course and ran in front of me - his cool down is 6 minute mile I guess. He is really fast (and placed real well in the Olympic race).

And there it was finish line - I almost took down one poor lady in the finish shoot as I passed her (she was in the Oly race). After I crossed the finish line I simply collapsed to the ground to give my legs a break. I was not exhausted I just needed to sit down and that was the fastest way to sit. I returned the chip, git back up and grabbed some food.

Then I re-united with my family and shared the moment with my son and wife. They are my greatest supporters. Later I met with Leah, then Chris crossed the finish line and we shared a moment.

Then it was time to change to something dry and collect my stuff from transition. After that I checked the results and there it was - I was third overall male finisher. That is the first time placing in top three for me and it feels great. This is certainly thanks to the great support and training guidance I'm getting from my coaches Erica and Craig. I'm looking forward to my next race which is the Chesapeake Man Aqua Velo - which is 2.4mi swim and 112mi bike race (so Ironman distances with no marathon). After that I'll be training for Philly marathon with goal to break the 3:30 mark that escaped me last year with few stupid first timer mistakes I plan to avoid this year.

Quakerman 70.3 - quick update

2009-09-14T00:27:00.001-04:00

This is just a short update after few weeks of silence. I have been busy training and at work. This past Saturday I competed in 70.3 race around lake Nockamixon. It was cold and rainy day which was not all that bad - I take it rather than the 95 degrees humid day we had 2 years ago. I did very well during this one and placed third overall in field shy of 100 people. Proper race report with pictures will follow. Sunday was family day and tomorrow back to work. I'm sure I'll find some time to post more details some day this week.

Patriots triathlon turned duathlon

2009-08-04T22:14:00.001-04:00

This Sunday was another race day, nothing big just another B-race to keep me on my toes. I had busy work week so I did not have much time to worry about the race preparation until Friday evening when I got home totally exhausted. Saturday was devoted to packing and relaxation with the family to regain at least some composure before the race. During the week I sporadically checked the weather forecast and it looked like we will have some rain, but no storms were expected in the area until about 2 ours after the start - that is late bike and early run in this race. So I was pretty relaxed about it. Well until I got up on Sunday morning to pouring rain and thunder. Well let's hope it passes. I took few extra large ziploc bags for my shoes, socks and other run stuff and left the house.

I got to the race venue as second or third car - for some reason directions predicted 50 minutes ride, but that turned to be about 35 minutes in morning no traffic conditions. Great I have some time to get setup which is good, because I did not really do any prep during the week - I actually planned my nutrition as I mixed it on Saturday evening. Not ideal. After I got setup and the rain was still on and off I noticed a flash. Oh someone just took picture I thought - until I heard thunder. Well this does not look like we will be swimming at all I thought. After another 20-30 minutes of thundering and rain the race director announced that we will do a duathlon. The sprint race was to start with 1 mile run and out half lite race with 2 miles run. Great I just lost the advantage of my stronger swim. I did get a big trash bag and put all the stuff I will not need into it and left it next to my bike. Packed socks and visor in separate bag not to get them wet from wet shoes from the first run and cleared separate bag for my running shoes so they do not get more wet during the bike. After that I met Leah and saw Erica and Craig pull in to spectate and cheer us on. I did not know at that time that Pete from EnMu squad is racing as well. Only realized that on the run when I saw him for brief moment (so brief I could not even say Hi, but we met after the race and had a good chat). After that Leah and I went for warm-up run and as we were heading back Erica and Craig rushed us to the starting line. Apparently the plan changed and the race was starting 15 minutes earlier. OK we had about 30 seconds to get ready - which meant for me to sprint to the front. Then I heard 10 seconds, 5 seconds, GO!!!. All right this is the best timed warm-up in any race I ever had. I was little disappointed with the weather, but soon forgot about it and kept focused on running hard, but not too hard. The run was mixed road and packed gravel road. The pace in the first 200 meters was too fast and I consciously slowed down to about 6:20-6:30 minute miles on the flats and about 7:15 on the slight uphills. Overall I'm happy with the run although it felt like being in a dream not completely conscious.

I ran into the T1, found my rack, took off my shoes and shoved them into the bag, then I grabbed my bike only to realize I need a helmet, well only to realize I still have my hat on. I tossed it to the ground and put on my helmet. Then ran off with my bike. The whole T1 was little over 50 seconds, but it felt very long for my standard. Need to put this on my practice brick workouts in case I have another duathlon.

Bike was also interesting. In the first curve I noticed that one of the breaks is not fully engaging - not all that good in rainy conditions. Being disoriented I thought it is the read, so I checked the quick release, which was fine, then I tightened the brake cable while riding. I let few people pass me knowing I'll get them later in the bike leg anyways. Only about 4 miles into the bike I realized the front break is the issue and fixed it - the quick release was off from me changing the wheel before the race - good lesson for next time (left brake font - as if I'm on the bike the first time). The rest of the bike was pretty uneventful. The race is done on 13 miles big loop that is scaled down to about 10 miles smaller loop that the half lite riders complete 2 more times. I took the first loop easy to test the waters and see how fast I can go to the curves and downhill. The next two loops I rode more aggressively, but still stayed on the cautions side. No need to have another gash in my thigh and be out of commission for few weeks. During the first loop I basically gained few positions I lost on the first 2-3 miles and kept the position through the whole 2nd loop. I closed the gap a little to the pack of 3 riders, but only passed them through the 3rd loop as people started to experience fatigue. It seemed to me that many riders took the first loop too hard and paid for it later. When I rolled into the T2 Craig yelled to me that I'm in 15th place. Not bad for this race format I thought. As I ran to the transition through the mud and puddles of muddy water the mud kept splashing all over my bike and body. When I racked the bike I was still standing in big pool of muddy water and had a decision to make - socks or no socks. Well it is only 7 miles and my feet are anyways going to have blisters. So no socks. I cleaned my feet in the muddy water and grass and put on my shoes. Grabbed my visor, gel flask and off I was - some 50 seconds again.

That brings us to the run which is pretty deceiving. The first mile and a half is downhill and then you go another 2 miles on rolling terrain that is mostly downhill. I kept my pace just around 7:00-7:15 and felt good. I was not redlining on the run and took time to sip gel just before aid station and took water while walking for 20-30 seconds (not all aid stations - only 3 of them). I knew there is 14 guys in front of me and kept looking for them. The first one appeared fairly soon, but the second one already had about 6 minutes gap on the leader, third and fourth guy were together and the rest were pretty much 10-15 seconds from each other. On the run I did not keep count, but I passed few people and on the way back in the last 1.5 miles I got passed by two guys. Overall I did not gain or lose position, but I was not all that happy with it. When I hit the last mile I thought HTFU and kept going. I checked few times how much gap there was to the guys behind me and did not see anyone. Last time I checked I was some 500m from the finish and there were two guys pretty close. My thought - I did not work hard to get passed in the last stretch and I opened it up from 7:30 mile to 6:30 mile and then on the finishing stretch which was ankle deep in mud and water ran 5 minute mile. They did not pass me and I have no idea if they really attempted. Well here is the only photo I have from this race and as few people said it summarized the day very well. It is me crossing the finish line after sprinting in the mud. Enjoy.

For the numbers inclined crowd, here is the breakdown:
Overall place: 15
Age group place: 4
Run (2mi): 13:24
T1: 0:00:54
Bike (38mi): 1:43:04
T2: 0:00:50
Run (7mi): 0:50:54
Total: 2:49:05

After the race I hang around with Craig and Pete and we cheered on Leah as she finished. Then we chatted little more in the rain an waited for the awards ceremony. Results were not posted due to broken printer. During the ceremony we learned that Leah placed 3rd in her age group (Congrats Leah on job well done in your first long race) and Pete won his age group - well done Pete and great confidence builder for your IM later in the season. Overall despite the rain the race was good. Although I was disappointed not being on the podium I had a great race and ran my heart out. It reconfirmed that the training is taking me in the right direction and that my fitness is definitely where it should be. Looking forward to next race in September. By the way today I signed up for Eagleman 70.3 for June 2010. It is almost local race so I should do it.

Now only if the blisters and chaffed feet would heal fast so I can get back to running. Biking and swimming are OK as I tested yesterday and today.

Anthracite Triathlon 2009 - Olympic distance

2009-07-20T00:45:00.001-04:00

OK I need to admit it up front I am excited. This was a great race and it shaped up very nicely for me. I'm all tapered for my A-race that I have not been able to start last weekend due to some issues that prevented me from traveling away from PA. I was looking forward to this race to see how my fitness progressed over the past year. And I was literally blown away. But let's not get ahead of the report.

I'll not start with the wake-up call and coffee, because all the stuff that happens before the wave start while important is not as interesting. So let's start with the swim. I knew from DC that I need to push right out of the gate to get out of the mess of mass start. I lined up little to the right of the group and way in front as far as I could stand. When the horn sounded I just jumped in and started pushing pretty hard for about 100 meters. Then I settled into my pace and kept sighting. I swam this part as a warmup earlier and since then wind picked up and there was a light chop that was washing over my head. Other times I would freak out, but this was nothing compared to Chesapeake Bay swim so I just kept going. Key was sighting as all the rescue kayaks had same colors as buoys. At one time I was not sure which was which and needed to take second peak on few strokes to keep on track to turn buoy. Funny part - until I hit the first turn buoy which was about 700m away I was swimming alone. After the turn I was trading places with two other guys and that placement stayed until the end of the swim. The swim back was very easy and only after the turn we had to fight a little bit of current that was pushing me away from the course. But nothing major. I exited the water at 24:24 which is huge improvement over last years 36:56. Last year was no wetsuit swim, this year we were allowed to use wetsuit.

There is a long run up the hill to transition that I paced myself on. I did not want to raise my HR even more than it already was. In transition I put on my helmet grabbed my bike and went on my merry way. When I got out of the park few people yelled at me that I'm in 3rd place which is pretty much where I stayed through out the bike. I passed the 2nd guy for a while just before the long climb and kept my position on the climb, but he got ahead of me after the climb and rode away over the next 10 miles. I kept seeing him on the long straights, but was not able and willing to push harder that I did. The bike course is very hard by any other tri standard - I would compare it to Black Bear Tri with few hills stacked on top of each other. There are few major climbs, the worst one is the first hill about 2-3 miles into the ride. You really need to get your biking legs for that one and pace it. The second hard hill is after the half way point when you enter Jim Thorpe and have to climb pretty steep hill that turns right into a wall. After more climbing there is some more climbing and rolling climbing back to the Lentz Trail and that one is rolling road where you can pick-up some speed. Speaking of speed - the course has some really nice hills where you can pick-up some serious speed. I did not break my speed record from last year, but got pretty close - 47.9mph on the first downhill. And this year no police or volunteers were in harms way (read last years report if you want to learn what almost happened there). The bike then goes beyond the park entrance to the bottom of the first major hill to turnaround and back to the park. I timed my gap on the 1st and 2nd guys and I was about 6 minutes behind #1 and about 3 minutes behind #2. Soon there was park entrance and time to get running. I do not have exact bike split, but my split after T2 was 1:10:45 which is by itself improvement over last year by few minutes.

I knew what I was up to in the run. The run course starts with 2.5 miles nice trail rolling run which is mostly slightly downhill. After that you make sharp right hand turn and climb steep hill to turn point which is about 0.75 miles up the hill. I figured I'll go by feel. In the past few races I was running on what I call edge of side stitch - you can feel it coming, but if you keep the same pace it does not hinder your run. That was around 7 minute pace on the downhill and about 8:00 - 8:30 on the uphill. About 3/4 way up the hill I got passed by two guys that were clearly faster runners. I decided to run my own race and make sure I have enough energy to finish the whole run strong. After the turnaround I was ripping it up down the hill and keeping the one in my sights. That was the case for remainder of the slight uphill back towards the transition area. I did have few rough patches where the bad Jan was telling me to stop and walk. I did not listen to him much and just kept going. On the run I was running on fumes - especially on the way back to the park. I had gel flask with me, but knew that if I took a sip I may trigger some cookie tossing and I knew I can sustain the final two miles on what I took on the bike and before the swim (about 280kcal on bike and same amount about 30 minutes before the swim). I did not even take any water, just kept pushing back to the finish. When I saw last mile marker I knew I'll make it and the challenge was to gain some time on that last mile. I went to overdrive and picked-up the pace. I felt it right away, body rebelled but I did not let it slow down. I knew that the last part of the run is downhill and flat so I can let the gravity take care of the final sprint. Still need to look over the mile splits on that run, but my last mile is most likely the fastest one. When I had the finish line in sight I unleashed the overdrive mode and spent last reserves. I crossed finish line, slowed down, took down my chip and collapsed next to my son. I was done. After few minutes resting I sipped all my gels I had for run, ate banana and drank some water.

Can you say "I had enough"

Refueling and sharing the moment

Handshake with Craig shortly after he crossed the line

Then we waited around to see my coach and other EnMu athletes finish. First to cross the line was Jes who also took the top overall women. She is very fast. After a minute or so Craig was crossing the line. We chatted a bit at the finish line and then Ian, Dasa and Veronika decided it was time for beach. I went to transition to pack my stuff and put it to the car while they went to the beak where I joined them. The award ceremony at this race does not start until the last person crosses the finish line so we had some time to swim and have fun. The beach time was great and we all enjoyed it a lot.

Getting ready for the water

Fun with Veronika

Look daddy I'll show you something

You see... Yeah he smashed my face in the water - all in good spirits of playing

Look mommy how I can kick the water

Then it was time for the awards ceremony and I already knew that while I crossed the line fifth I gave up two more spots due to the waves start. I was in the first wave and two people had better finish time and passed me in the overall ranking - well guess what the first one is Jes and the second one is Craig - I was not even upset about it. In the final tally I finished first in my age group which is a first one ever. So I'm enjoying the moment while my legs are hurting like hell. But that will get better over the next few days.

Receiving the age group award with Ian

Erica, Craig and me posing with our new rocks

One last note - all this was possible thanks to the help I received from my coaches Erica and Craig at the Endurance Multisport. They are just great. Well you can judge by the results - there were three people from EnMu in this race and all three placed first in their AG or overall. The best change to my training I did from last year was to work with professional coaches.

Dextro Energy Sprint Tri Washigton DC

2009-06-25T23:27:00.001-04:00

WARNING: This post is little longer that usual.

This past weekend I was in Washington DC to spectate the Dextro Energy ITU World Championship Series which is a new series of ITU draft legal races. Original plan was to drive to DC and watch the pro triathletes on the ITU circuit battle it out. But few weeks before the race itself I realized that I could actually do the sprint age group race and still make the pro race. Another thing that was interesting was the fact that parts of the course was shared between the age group and pro races - in particular the swim portion (the ITU pontoon), parts of bike and finish line on the run. Where else can you finish your race sprinting on the blue carpet and cross the same finish line that later in the day will be used by pro triathletes some of which competed in Olympic games and actually won (yes Jan Frodeno was in attendance).

Without boring you with the details of the 3 hours drive to DC here are few interesting things about the race. It was organized in downtown DC, the registration was in Grand Hyatt and transition area by the Potomac river on Ohio Dr. That presented a slight logistical challenge for me as out of towner, but organizers had bus service from the hotel to transition. So after attending the mandatory 30 minutes race briefing to learn about the intricacies of the course, that besides swim in muddy Potomac featured ride on major highway in opposite direction than regular traffic (the road was closed to traffic during the race), I was off to the bus with my bike. We needed to leave the bikes in the transition over night which greatly simplified logistics on race morning. After checking in my bike I walked back to the hotel which may not have been the best idea as it was pretty hot and the walk was good two miles or maybe even longer. When I got to the hotel I was hungry, but did not have any interest to wonder about town to find food. Luckily the hotel had restaurant where I got good dinner and then I walked across the street to CVS to buy something for breakfast. The race start was at 6am for olympic distance and 6:30 for sprint. Which is pretty early for any race. I had until about 3:30 to get some sleep and then it was time to get to race.

Funny part about the race starting at this early hour is that when I was leaving the hotel also some hookers were just walking out. I met few more on the way to the Grand Hyatt where the bus departed for the transition. Talk about unusual sights on race morning. Bus took us around the town about 3/4 miles from transition and we walked the rest. Setup was very quick - it was a sprint so I had one bottle with 150 kcal mix of Heed on the bike, one bottle for drinking prior to race, goggles, ear plugs, wetsuit, helmet, sunglasses, shoes, visor, race belt and gel. Sounds like a lot, but my transition space was very neat and felt empty compared to longer races.

After setup I went for short warmup run as we were not allowed to swim prior to the start (bummer). After warmup it was time to leave transition and go to the race start ceremony where major of DC (who raced in the olympic distance race and was in the first wave) spoke few words. And soon the first olympic race wave was off. After a while I started to make my way to the swim corral to secure solid place for the swim. I lined up in the front towards the right side of the river where the current was supposed to be slower. First part of the swim was against the current, then turn for about 30 meters swim and turn back with the current, then swim behind the pontoon take another two turns and go back to the pontoon. Pretty straightforward swim of 750 meters with only 4 buoys all turn buoys for my wave. I started in 8th wave of the day. The plan for the day was to step on the gas at the start and keep going until the finish line. Very easy plan to follow - Craig remarked that this is the only way to find out if and where I blow up. After all this was B-priority race. So I did. Soon after starting we caught up with the slow swimmers from previous wave and I had to swim around them. The first turn was there fast, second even faster. On the swim back with the current I noticed that the current was pulling me away from my direction towards the middle of the river and instead of actually being helped by the current I needed to fight it even on the way back. Somewhere at that point I had to take a breather (started too fast). Turned on my back and kicked for about 30 seconds. Then turned back and kept going. At that point the swim was very difficult - lots of people on the course as we had both the sprint and oly (the very slow swimmers) in the way. I had to swim around many people. Got into few position battles - and while I did not get kicked I had to show few folks that I was serious about keeping my line (not sure really if they fought over the line or just were trying to survive). I was out of water slower than I expected, but I knew that I needed to focus on getting fast through T1.

After about 150m run from the swim exit to transition I stripped out of my wetsuit, put on my helmet, grabbed bike and off I went. I had shoes and glasses on the bike and I put them on after I got rolling. When getting on my bike I forgot I had installed a new flat wing and tore my race suit a little - I do not seem to have much luck with these things :-). Anyways right from start I put the hammer down and just kept going between two gears - hard and harder. The course was almost flat with few short and fairly easy climbs. The bike can be summed up as me being in aero position the whole way while yelling "On your right" the whole 20 km of the bike. I was not passed by even a single rider and must have passed what seemed like 200 people. I'm always amazed at these events why some folks invest so much money in their aero bike and then sit up and hold the bullhorns the whole way. I even saw few newbies sporting new helmets with visor and being in aero position. Well we all started somehow, but it made me chuckle in the middle of getting back to the transition. Even without knowing the course I got out of my shoes in time and made a smooth dismount (I recall someone yelling at me to get off before the line which I did and told them not to worry - I know that is a penalty :-). The T2 was as smooth as T1 - just took off the helmet, put on my shoes (no socks for the 5 k run), grabbed my visor, race belt and off I went. I knew that after the hard bike my run will be somewhat painful and it was. I decided to go as fast as my legs and body will allow. In the first few miles about 3 or maybe 4 people passed me which did not please me, but they were running much to fast for me to try to stick with them. After a mile I slowed down to take a cup of water from the aid station and then kept plugging. As I went to mile 2 I was able to start building the pace and I kept increasing the pace through out the rest of the run. It all went pretty fast - I mean it was 5k after all. at mile 2 I heard steps behind me and someone passed me - darn my AG. I pushed little harder to stay with him, but after about 400 meters I just could not match his pace and I let him go. Which seems slowed him down a little as he did not hear my steps. I kept in the same distance to him through the rest of the run, but in the last mile could not bridge the gap. I finished measly 12 seconds behind him. It was a great race. Funny part was that when I finished there were just few people that finished and the staff was just getting our bags out of the car, the food was just being delivered. So I took time to get my bag, changed to fresh clothes, stretched a little and walked to my hotel. I took shower, packed my stuff, checked out and went back to the race finish line with my camera. When I got back the results were posted - I looked at the order of finish and found my name on line 25 (wow I thought 25th overall is not bad and to my surprise I was 3rd in my age group). Sweet. So I not only waited to spectate the pro event, but also waited for the awards ceremony to collect my award. It was just amazing feeling to finish so well in such a big race. I was hoping for good finish, but this really blew me away. Only few days later when the final results were announced I realized that I finished 13th overall since the order of finish did not account for wave start. Even sweeter. So if this event is back in DC next year I'm pretty sure I'll make the trip down again. Great race with PR course - flat as a pancake with slightly difficult swim where you need to fight current (but not all that bad).

After the race I made a stop at the Suunto exposition and rewarded my great performance with a new watch (guess which one) and I also got a pair of compression socks from Skins for the 3 hours car ride back home. I knew that without them I would suffer the next few days. They actually work very well and I used them even today after my track workout.

If you want to check out the race venue on video you can watch the ITU race recap/highlights on the ITU site. It clearly shows the swim portion (only we started in water and did just one loop) and the finish line which was just a great experience. Especially for folks that were finishing during the ITU pro race.

And for the numbers people here are my splits from the sprint race:
Swim: 14:00
T1: 1:28 (8th best)
Bike: 30:43 (5th best)
T2: 0:44(3rd best)
Run: 22:19
Time: 1:09:12
And how that compares with my plan? Well I had about 3 minutes slower swim than I expected, T1 fasted than expected by about 1:30, bike faster by 3 minutes than expected, T2 about minute faster that expected, run slower by 1:20 than expected. Still beat my projected time by about a minute. So next time - swim harder, ease little bit on the bike and push harder on the run. So I can get my 12 seconds for that 2nd spot in my AG :-). I am still ecstatic about the result.

Chesapeake Bay 1 mile swim challenge

2009-06-18T22:53:00.001-04:00

This past weekend I had a fun race planned - open water swim in the Chesapeake Bay. The key objective in this race was to test the waters literally. I have never done open water swim in the ocean and the 1 mile swim race presented a unique opportunity to test out how the swim will feel in my A-race.

I have decided to head down to Stevensville, MD on race day morning as the race was planned to start at 10am which gave me more than enough time to get down to MD. I would probably not do something like this again - the 3 hours drive to MD was OK, but the 3 hours drive back after the race was something I can do without.

But back to the race - after checking in and setting-up on the beach I observed Lin-Mark team setting-up the course for the swim. It was very simple triangle course - swim by five buoys on the way out, sharp turn right swim by two buoys, hard turn back to the shore with one buoy and then the finish line. You can probably make up the course from the picture below if you go to Flickr and look at the full size picture. To the right is route 50 bridge that my coach Erica swam by during her 4.4 mile swim - and she placed well in her race (11th women overall and 1st in her AG way to go Erica.).

The water did not look all that bad from the shore (what a mistake it was to think that). After a short wait I hooked up with Leah and Lori (fellow EnMu athletes) we attended a short pre-race meeting, suited up and lined-up for the swim. Leah was in 3rd wave and me with Lori were in the last 'pink' wave.

Before the start I lined up to second row expecting to have solid swim and not wanting to swim through large packs during the start of the swim. Few seconds after lining up we were off. The way out was relatively easy - I was by the first buoys and felt pretty good. I did not overdo the start and felt I can pick it up a little. So I did. At the same time waves started to get little bigger and I was having troubles getting my breaths in between being slammed. I panicked a little and that raised my HR. After few minutes of struggle I decided to relax and take few breast strokes to clean my googles that in the meantime fogged (we were not allowed to do practice swim and I put googles under my cap so there was no way to dip them before the start). After that I decided to just take it with cold head and relax. From that point on I just swam with relaxed body while still pushing the pace a bit. I lost some time with the goggles cleaning and calming down, but I was now passing a lot of people that just started out too fast. After the fifth buoys I made a turn only to be kicked into a shoulder by fellow swimmer who obviously struggled by that point. My thought while hearing muffled "Sorry man" was - at least it was not my face. And I kept going. I had few more minor collisions with few people, but no more kicks or slams. After the turn back to shore I had troubles sighting buoys - they used one that is blue, yellow and orange which was just not possible to see. But after few meters I could see it in the distance and I corrected my direction to pass it without risking DQ. On the way back to the shore the waves got much better and I was able to pick the pace up even more. I swam all the way to the point where I touched the bottom and then ran up to the timing mat - it is a race after all. And then it was over - I was like "Hell where is my bike to hop onto." But yeah that was it.

I grabbed bottle of water and waited for Lori and Leah to come out of the water. They were out in few minutes and we grabbed some food, got out t-shirt from organizers, took shower with bunch of other people and headed back to our stuff.

I did post time that is not all that glamorous - 33:18 for the mile swim, but it was a good result given the conditions. The winner had time little over 23 minutes which is very comparable to my swim result from Black Bear where the water was little choppy, but not as bad as during this race. I'm happy with the result and feel ready to tackle the ocean swim in my A-race.

I stuck around for a bit after the race, but then excused myself and headed back home as Dasa was leaving town and I had to resume my primary duty to take care of Ian. Before I left Chesapeake Bay I made a stop on the way from the beach in local crab shack and had a plate of fried shrimp which was just amazing. Then it was time to drive back home.

Next up is sprint triathlon in DC this coming weekend. After that I'll stay around to spectate the ITU race - I plan to stick around for the men race, not sure if I'll wait for the ladies. I'm looking forward to both the AG race and the Pro event as well even with rain forecast for most of Sunday it will be fun.

Black Bear Half Ironman Race Report

2009-06-02T23:37:00.001-04:00

Black Bear Triathlon is the most difficult race I ever participated in. It is situated in beautiful area of Pocono Mountains in PA. The race venue is near Lehighton in Beltzville state park. The event offers a sprint and half ironman distances. Last year I did the sprint and was very impressed with the CGI who puts up the race as well as the venue. This year I decided to upgrade to the half ironman distance which I like best of all distances I tried so far.

I'll spare you details of when I woke up and what I ate. I got on site just before the cars started to queue up at the park entrance. This year the setup was different and it in my opinion better than last year. The transition area was moved further down from the parking, but it was much close to run exit - no longer need to run 0.5 mile to get to your bike. The bike exit was little longer run, but it was much easier to manage than run uphill over roots and pavement barefoot. If CGI reads this - guys please keep the 2009 setup for next year if possible. The bike splits are little slower due to the extra run with the bike, but the transition setup this way is much better than 2008 event. When I was setting up in transition Garen stopped by and we chatted for a bit and I finally gave him his hardware from Quakerman HIM where he placed 3rd in my AG. After I got setup I went back to my car to drop off my bag. It was good to get walking. On the way out of transition I ran into Herb and we walked together while chatting away. Killing time before the start which was more than hour away for the HIM.

Then I came back to transition and started to look for Fred and Kristine to say hi and wish them good luck in Kristine's first triathlon and Fred's first half ironman. They are brave couple - both finished standing up and braved the difficulties of the course. I'm sure they will be back next year to conquer the Bear again.

Soon after that I started making my way to the beach for the practice swim. It was brisk morning so I spent only about 10 minutes in the water - I did some sculling practice and pick-ups while trying to avoid other people that practiced in the small roped off area. At that time the sprint was getting ready to start so I went back to the beach and cheered on the athletes that had much shorter day ahead of them. Time passed quickly and the HIM was getting ready to start. I looked for Erica, Craig and other EnMu athletes, but the beach was very busy. I only caught Erica as she was heading to the water for her part of the half iron relay. We wished each other luck and off she went. My wave was next so I got my goggle setup, swim cap and went to prepare for swim start. The start is in water and knowing my swim improvements I lined-up in the second row expecting to finish between 32 and 34 minutes. The swim started as usual with lots of jockeying for position, kicking, etc. But I made sure to avoid all the legs and big packs and just settled into my pace. This was first race I used sleeveless wetsuit and it is amazing. I can feel the water, do not need to lift hands against the rubber and get overall better feel for water. It is also fast. Swim went well until about 500 meters when my googles started to fog-up. Damn - I swam on my back kicking and cleaning my goggles. This repeated once again and after that I just decided to swim with mildly fogged googles which worked out pretty well. Everything was very smooth until the turn back where we caught up with the slow swimmers from previous wave and also the speedsters from the next wave caught us. I had to swim around a guy that seemed to perform slalom. No mater which side I tried to pass him on he always ended up blocking my way - swimming to the left, then right oh boy. So I kicked harder and swam very close around him. The rest of the swim was uneventful and I exited the water in 32:30 which is not bad for twice cleaning my googles.

Transition to bike was smooth. I took off my wetsuit, put on my helmet, grabbed my bike and off I went. The run uphill was pretty hard after the swim, but I knew I'll get my HR down eventually on the first part of the bike. I took the first 7 miles fairly easy to settle into my groove and did use easy gear on the uphills while still spinning hard gear on the downhills. Worked quite well and I soon found my pace. The course is best described as very hilly - total elevation gain over the 56 miles is about 1200 meters and there is no single part of the course that is flat. Either up or downhill which makes the course hard for taking in nutrition. When we were passing the sprint newbies on the hardest hills I encouraged them, but kept focused on me not expending too much energy on the first loop. I was done with the first loop just around the 1:23-25 mark which was just on pace to have good bike. On second loop I noticed I kept passing guy on red Trek TT bike and after looking at his legs I recognized them from previous weekend ride with EnMu athletes - it was Herb. We practically paced off of each other (legally) the rest of the course and finished the bike side by side - you can see Herb and me above on the way to T2. That was also time when Dasa, Ian and Ivana got to the park to cheer me on and spectate the race. Thus pictures start at the end of bike.

T2 was smooth and I was feeling well even considering the grueling hills we just finished riding. I took off on the run with my fuel belt and kept plugging at what looked like a relaxed 7:40 pace. Only at mile 1 I noticed that it was more like 7:00 pace which was way too hard of a start. It showed on mile 2 where I got a huge side stitch that I had to work for the next few miles. It left me at about mile 5. I was able to run even with the stitch, but I could only go about 8:30 or slower otherwise it was just unbearable. I kept my fuel and salt intake and by mile 6 I was back running, but then my knee started to act up. Well I guess that is what you get when you do not run for a month before a race because of injury. The good thing is that I was able to run the whole 13.1 miles and I only walked aid stations and parts of the course where the side stitch just got too much to bear.

On second loop I caught up with Fred who was having hard time due to nutrition deficit. I said hi the first time we passed each other and then when I caught up with Fred on the dam we chatted a little, I gave him the rest of my nutrition (no ned for me to keep them as the finish was only about 2 miles for me) and then another runner suggested to Fred not to run with us and instead to take it easy. I stuck with the older runner for the next mile and a half and then our ways split. He was heading to second loop and I was heading to finish. It was funny as just before heading down to the finish line Jim (another EnMu athlete from our relay caught up with me and passed me).

It was good because I had someone to pace me to the finish. After the last turn there was the finish line about 200 meters ahead of us. At that time I heard Erica yell "Jan go for it, go, go!!!" so I mobilized what I have left and closed the gap to Jim and passed him about 10 or maybe 20 meters before the finish line - thanks to Craig's signature tempo workouts with pickups I'm able to do this. I hope no hard feelings Jim. It was not personal I really needed the few seconds I gained by this otherwise I would have been few places lower. Thank for pulling me across to the finish line. By the way you handily beat me in the run time. My run time was pretty pathetic due to the side stitch and knee issues. But I'll take this result. It was hard race and I left everything on the course on Sunday. Finished 40th overall and 6th in my AG. Not quite hardware position, but good placement. This race also shows me and Craig what we need to work on for my A race in July. Oh by the way Craig also raced and placed 15th overall which is great in this strong field. I was aiming for better finish than 5:24 - about 10-15 minutes faster to be honest. So I'm little disappointed with my run. On the other hand I'm happy that my ankles and heel are back to normal after 2 weeks of absolutely no running and painful walking. No signs of pain after the race which is really good - I look forward to my first long run this weekend and most likely some serious tempo work next week.

The race would not be as much fun if Dasa, Ian and Ivana were not there. Thanks for coming to cheer me on it was very helpful especially seeing you as I was getting back from first loop and heading out on the second one. They gave me the energy to run and smile at the same time. And it looks like they had pretty good time as well.

Leah and other EnMu athletes also raced this weekend and everyone did very well. You can read all about their relay race on Leah's blog.

Ian's first triathlon

2009-05-28T11:44:00.001-04:00

This past weekend we had two races on our family schedule. I did not participate in any one of them besides spectating. First one was a 5k in our town where both Dasa and Ivana ran a good time even in fairly hot and humid day. The other one was the first triathlon Ian did in the Swim in Zone pool in Center Valley. The coaches at Swim in Zone put together a great event for kid ages 3 and up. The course was the same for all ages only the distances were little different. Ian's age group had to swim one full lap in the 25yd pool (and they were allowed to use flotation devices and have parents as support), then bike 1/8th of a mile on the road and then run 2 laps around the parking lot which I estimate was about 75 meters (or maybe 100m run). We got Ian's transition setup early and then headed to the pool where we prepared for change of clothes after the swim and then went to the pool to watch the other age groups race.

At around 1pm they were ready to start Ian's age group. We lined up, Ian got into the noodle and swam the whole lap while Dasa, Zuzana and Ethan cheered us from the side of the pool. After the swim we ran to the changing room to dress for the bike. Once Ian got dressed (I did not change for the run not to hold him back) we headed to his transition area, grabbed helmet, bike and off we went on one loop course on the bike. First half is downhill so it was easy and Ian cruised at pretty good speed. The second half he needed to push a little as it was uphill. Then we dropped off the bike and went on two loop run course around the parking lot. During the first lap Ian's friend Ethan joined us and ran with us the rest of the race. Ian wanted to beat everyone so he pushed real hard on first loop and was running out of energy before the final straightaway to the finish. But then he re-grouped and sprinted to the finish.

Great race. After the race and sip of water Ian wanted to go back to the bike course so we did it again to cool down :-). It was a great event and if they do another one in the future we will be sure to participate. Ian was talking about the race for next 2 days.

Which HRM to chose? Little help narrowing the list.

2009-05-28T10:35:00.001-04:00

As you all know I have owned good share of the HRMs over the past 3 years. I do not even want to count them. I often ended-up using the top of the line HRM from Polar, Suunto or Garmin. Recently I was involved in discussions with other users that were planning to buy a new HRM and were struggling to decide between the Suunto T6c, Polar RS800cx or Garmin ForeRunner 405 or Forerunner 310xt (soon to be released). Following 10 questions while not giving single answer (because there is no single answer) they should be helpful to narrow down the list for you. It considers the above listed models for the three companies. I did not look at the fitness level models or cycling computers. When I refer to Suunto I mean Suunto T6c, for Polar I mean RS800cx and for Garmin I refer to Forerunner 405 and Forerunner 310xt (for the 310xt the info is based on available information on the web. I have not used the HRM in training and do not even plan to).

Do you want mapping of your routes and review the routes later on PC? If yes look at Garmin and Polar.
Do you want EPOC/TE capability? If yes look at Suunto or Polar. Suunto has the EPOC/TE built into the watch and software. With Polar the EPOC/TE is available post exercise in FirstBeat Athlete software.
Do you want guided workouts - e.g. sessions that guide you through training routine? If yes do you expect more complex sessions than warm-up / interval 1 / interval 2 and cool down? If yes look at Polar and Garmin that offer more granular definition for each workout phase. Polar has an edge in this arena as it supports greatest detail in definition of the phases and respective limits (pace, HR, HR zone, cadence, etc.).
Do you want to swim with your HRM? If yes look at Polar, Suunto. With Garmin only the new 310xt is rated for swimming.
Do you want HR during the swim? Look at Suunto with Memory belt (you will get the HR post swim, but the output is pretty bad in the pool, better in open water swim with race suit or tri suit); or look at lower end Polar with 5kHZ technology that transmits under water (RS300x, S625X, S725X, RS400, etc.).
Do you prefer GPS integrated in the HRM? Only Garmin offers this.
Do you want to use the HRM as regular watch? Look at Suunto or Polar. Garmin only the 405, the 310xt will only win you price for the dorkiest guy in the office.
Do you need separate HR zones per sport? Only Polar supports this in their software. No watch has more than one set of HR zones. Polar is the best choice at this time as you can use the HR to define your guided exercise to stay in specific zone and review the data in the software.
Do you need watch with automatic switch between sensors? Look at Suunto T6c. Other units require user intervention to switch between for example bike and run.
Do you need run cadence? Look at Polar or Garmin - both with foot pod. If you need stride length only Polar does that at this time.

The list above is not complete, but should help narrow the choices. There is no one ideal watch that does it all. It is about making the choice that satisfies your needs. All the watches will do good job in capturing basic information about your training like training time, lap splits, HR, pace, altitude, speed and cadence on bike, etc. Feel free to drop me a line if you have questions.

RS800cx Pro Team Edition hands on

2009-05-13T17:45:00.001-04:00

I reported earlier that Polar is releasing new version of the RS800cx to the market geared towards cycling community. The RS800cx Pro Team Edition has identical functionality as the RS800cx model already released last year. The major changes are in the design of the watch and packaging.

Let's start with the design - while the standard RS800cx body is made from gray plastic with silver face and silver bars on the watch band the Pro Team Edition watch body is black with polished metal on the watch face and the bars on the band. It looks stunning and the look changes with changing light conditions which is great. At first I was not 100% sure I like it, but wearing it for last 24 hours changed my view. It is almost like having multiple watches on your wrist during the day.

The second change is in the packaging. The watch comes with the CS speed WIND and CS cadence WIND sensors, black version of the IR USB stick for data transfer, Polar Pro Trainer 5, watch band extension, USB cable extension and manuals.

The retail price is set at 449 USD, but you can get one with discount at the dealer I used and if you search a little you can find additional 5 or 10% discount that they will gladly accept. I was amazed how quickly the watch arrived - I placed the order on Monday at 4pm and the watch was at my door on Tuesday late afternoon. I did one bike ride with it so far and like it a lot - well I love the RS800cx to start with.

Here are few pictures of the box, watch itself and comparison of the original RS800cx and the new Pro Team Edition.

By the way if you are interested in slightly used RS800cx in absolutely mint condition with ZAGG screen protector on the face I have one for very reasonable price. Drop me a note on Twitter or in comments. I'm keeping the Pro Team Edition and do not really need two RS800cx.

Updated May 18th 2009

Giving good example

2009-05-12T09:16:00.001-04:00

This is just a short one.

The other day Ian was watching one of his favorite episode of Backyardigans - Race around the world that has really catchy songs and is about the friends racing each other in a long race (more like adventure race). After the show he notice my HR monitor laying on the counter. He grabbed it, then I heard few beeps as he started it up (and it complained about no HR and foot pod). Then he said "I'm racer daddy" and started to run circles between kitchen, living room and dining room. Each lap he pressed the lap button and after about 7 laps he said he had won and wanted a medal. I went to my office and grabbed one of my half marathon medals and gave it to him. He was so proud that he took the medal with him to bed that night. Moments like this reinforce my conviction that the training I do is not only for my own benefit... I always love to see him genuinely excited about sports.

Lehigh Valley Half race review

2009-05-08T14:20:00.001-04:00

This is not a full and detailed analysis of the race, just a recount of the race mile by mile and discussion of the pacing during each race segment. I do think I may have run it little differently if I was not hit by the GI issues, but overall I ran as good I could on the day. I do not have splits for every mile as I missed few mile markers along the way, but the available splits provide sufficient picture to understand how things unfolded. If you plan to run Lehigh Valley Half next year this may be helpful for your race planning.

Mile	Average pace
1	7:10
2-3	7:06
4-5	7:16
6	7:14
7-8	7:23
9-10	7:25
11	7:28
12	7:20
13.1	7:00

From the splits it is apparent that I did not quite run negative split race. But even without negative split I ran pretty even race considering the course and conditions (mostly mine).

The course is downhill for the entire first mile. I was able to restrain myself from going too fast in that section. That is mainly because the 6:30 pace group leader also chose slower pace on the first few miles and I was staying with that group for first mile or two. Mile 2-3 are mostly flat or slightly downhill. In this section I was still adjusting my pace to settle into what seemed like a comfortable pace. Little faster than the planned 7:10 - 7:15 pace. At the end of the mile 3 I got the $#%*& gel. The slight rolling starts around the end of mile 3 and goes on for the next 2 miles. My pace slightly dropped in this section I guess due to the fact that I walked the aid station to get enough water. I picked-up the pace slightly on mile 6 and was within the range. From mile 7 the race moves from road to trail where you can expect slight drop in pace. But mine dropped more than planned due to the GI issues. The rough patch in this race for me was between the miles 9 and 10. That is where there are not many spectators with exception of the covered bridge and aid stations. It is nice area and I love to run there for training run, but in race it is probably the hardest part of the course to deal with. Mile 11 was the slowest due to two things - walked the aid station and it has two biggest climbs of the course. First one is right at mile 10 marker and the second is just about 500 meters further down the road. The course then turns back to road. On mile 12 there are two slight uphills after the aid station as the course turns back towards the starting line (you basically run the second mile here in the opposite direction). I was working quite hard on mile 12, but I guess the climbs took their toll. I did not take in any more water or nutrition at this point. When I hit the mile 12 marker I just unleashed all I had left and ran my heart out. I build up the pace towards the stadium - saving energy a little on climbs and then picking-up the pace on flats (no more downhills here). Once I had the climb to the stadium behind me I just ran as fast as I could manage. The average pace on that stretch is sub 6 minute mile, but it is only 3/4 of a track so it is just about 300 meters.

So there you have it blow by blow. Few days after the race I'm really happy with how I ran it. There are few things that I could have done better, but all in all it was a well executed race and surprisingly I did not suffer in it as much as in other half marathons. The tempo and progression long runs make all the difference. Thanks Craig for helping me come this far. It is 20 minutes improvement over my very first attempt at this distance only 2 years ago.

And if you want to look at the course altitude profile (filled area), pace (blue lines) and HR (red line) see the log below.

Polar Pro Trainer 5 on YouTube

2009-05-07T18:13:00.001-04:00

Just came across this great overview of PPT5. It highlights the key benefits of the software and shows the granularity to which you can plan training and analyze workout data. Polar is still the best for this from what I have seen and used.

New look and feel for Polar RS800cx, T6c, T3c and Suunto foot pods

2009-05-07T09:13:00.001-04:00

Both Polar and Suunto are adding new look and feel to the top of the line HR monitors this summer. Both companies announced new version of their watches.

Polar is introducing RS800cx Pro Team Edition package at the beginning of the cycling season. Its functionality is identical to the RS800cx and the package (at least in the US) will contain cycling speed sensor and cycling cadence sensor. You can add running S3 sensor and G3 GPS sensor to the watch as accessories. The watch has functionality just like the RS800cx only different case design. The package will contain the YSB IR stick and the Polar Pro Trainer 5 software for planning and evaluation of your training. I had chat with one of the dealers of Polar watches and they should have the watch in stock in the next few days. Polar announced that several pro cycling teams including Quick Step, Rabobank, and Caisse d'Eparge will use the Pro Team Edition in training and racing.

Suunto is also introducing a new look of two HRMs and foot pod. If you always wanted to have a watch that Matty Reed, Andy Potts, Javier Gomez, Jan Frodeno and other Suunto ambassadors use you will have your chance in late May or early June (depends on locality - US dealers should have watch in stock in mid May [updated following conversation with dealer in the US]). The T6c Red Arrow will be available for purchase to mark Suunto's collaboration with ITU and timing the Dextro Energy World Championship Series. The watch has just different color, otherwise is identical with the regular T6c that is currently offered as either Black (more like greenish black) or Fusion (combination of red and greenish black). I confirmed with Suunto dealer that the watch will be offered as standalone with no sensors. No specific packages have been announced yet, but that may come later (just like with T6c the triathlon package was announced few weeks after official release of the watch).

In addition to the T6c Red Arrow Suunto will be offering new design of T3c - Black Arrow that will have identical functions to T3c and should be available in the same timeframe as the T6c Red Arrow. In addition to the new HRMs Suunto will also introduce red and yellow version of their foot pod in case you wanted to draw attention to your foot pod. The black version of the foot pod will continue to be offered. From materials that are available on Suunto site it does not seem there were any changes in the Foot pod or the HRMs other than new colors.

Lehigh Valley Half Marathon and other fun

2009-05-04T23:45:00.001-04:00

Just like last two years I have been preparing to race on Sunday with group of like minded people in the half marathon in Lehigh Valley. Only this year we were taking Ian on Saturday to do the kids run. We went out little earlier to pick-up the race packet before the kids race and walk through the expo. I have not found anything extremely interesting other than a fuel belt that seems to be more comfortable and better suited for racing than my 4 bottle belt. This one is Fuel Belt Helium with two bottles holders, small pocket for keys, salt tablets and a like and holder for gel flask. I took it with me to the race which was good thing. But let's talk about the kids race first.

We signed-up Ian on-line well ahead of the race so we did not need to fill out a form on site. The beauty of the kids race is that practically any kid that shows up can run for free. All kids get a large number 1 bib and t-shirt along with instructions. Each bib has a kid claim number (just like on race bibs you have the bag claim number) that you need to tear off to get your kid back at the end of the race - I found that little funny.

About fifteen minutes before the race they lined us up into age groups and walked us slowly to the cordoned street for the run. Ian ran with the 3-4 years old crowd that is the only group that lets parents in the run with the kids (but only in the back).

They walked us the 200 meters to the start of the run, lined up the kids and off we went.

It was fun to see all the kids running.

Ian initially wanted to run, but I guess all the noise around us was little too much for him so he decided to walk it.

So we walked the 200 meters and passed the finish. Just as in the big race they handed kids bottles of water and finisher medals. He was little overwhelmed by all the noise, but I'm glad we went out and did the run. I plan to take him out to the LVRR weekend kids runs in the parkway. I'm sure there will be less music and noise and it may be even smaller event which we both prefer :-). Don;t get me wrong it was a nice event, but at times the noise level was much even for me. We had a lot of fun doing it. My feet actually hurt pretty badly after spending good three hours in the streets. But that is why we do it - to have fun. After all the Sunday run was a fitness test and while I was hoping for PR I would not be too upset if I did not get it. So here is the finished with the medal and us proud parents.

I guess now a little bit about the Sunday race. It will be real short and maybe even little funny if you like the race reports that "Steve in speedo?! Gross!" publishes on his side (if you do not read his blog you should it is fun). This race report is very close to his well established standard. So here we go...

We got to the race site just in time to do proper warm-up. I ran about 2 miles on the race course and warmed up real well. Finished the warm-up as the 5k racers were lining up. I wished them well and we sent them off with clapping. Another 10 minutes later we were to run. I lined up close to the 1:30 pace group as I was unable to see the 1:40 group. And I noticed that few meters to my right was Amby Burfoot which made me really proud of running in this race. Before I enjoyed the moment we were off and running the first mile downhill. I noticed that my foot pod calibration was off as the watch was showing me running around 7:15 - 7:20 pace while the clock showed 7:08. I adjusted my pace not to over blow it, but I still kept the 1:30 group in my sights.

It was good weather and I decided to take in first sip from gel flask at mile 3. I did so and washed it down with water. At mile 4 I walked the aid station to get in enough water - I usually choke when I try to drink and run. Everything looked so well until little after mile 6 when huge urge to go to the bathroom came. Well here we go my stomach was on water and I still had more than half of the race ahead of me. I assessed the situation - I really wanted good time and there are not many toilets on the course. Plus mile six is after the turnaround and crowds already formed. Decision was made - I'll stick with it and see if I end up as this guy (warning if you have light stomach do not click). I'll spare you the grueling details of my stomach misbehaving between this time and mile 10. It is sufficient to say that it was not the best experience I had in a race - thought between the toilet seat, pace and fueling - tough balance to keep. At mile 10 marker I said to myself "If you can hold it this long you will hold it to the finish line!". Then all of a sudden there was mile 11 and I knew it is only a short distance to the last 300 meters around the track. I also forgot all about the stomach issues and focused on pushing the pace. It was also easier back on the road with all the major climbs behind me. I joined two other guys who were pushing around 7 minute mile. I slowed a little on the uphills and let them pass me only to catch-up with them on the flats or downhills. In no time I was climbing the last short steep hill to the stadium for the finishing sprint around the track. I was doing sub 6:00 minute pace at that time, but I could not close the gap to two guys ahead of me. But it did not matter as I was locked on the clock. It was very close to 1:35 and I so wanted to get under that time.

Dasa took many photos of me sprinting. I crossed the line just 4 seconds under and posted - 1:34:56 chip time.

All my stomach issues were gone at that point - well until I got massage, changed to clean clothes and had two bananas and water. Then it was time to get home quick. My afternoon was not as much fun - all I remember is our bathroom and its frequent visits. When I reviewed what I ate that could have caused this I discovered that the gels I used were expired. So one lesson learned - not only nothing new on a race day, also nothing expired. Unless you want to experience as much fun as I did. Now I'm left to wonder if the stomach issues were blessing that kept me from blowing-up on mile 11 or 12 or if I could have run little faster. Only next year will tell. Finally here is another photo of Ian as he was waiting together with Dasa and Ivana for me to finish in the rain. He is going to do lots of racing this summer - mostly runs, but also a triathlon on May 24th in the Swim-in-Zone pool where he is taking swim lessons. I'm so proud of him.

Suunto GPS pod end of relationship

2009-05-04T08:20:00.001-04:00

Well yeah I had done one more run with the Suunto GPS pod and decided that it is not any good for pacing. During a run it would show constantly pace around 9:30 - 10:30 per mile while based on my perceived effort I was running more in 8:00 - 8:30 range. When I loaded data to my computer it was indeed the 8:00 - 8:30 range. The GPS pod is great for overall distance tracking and probably does well on mile long splits. But it is of no use in regular road running. I'll stick with the foot pod that provides much better results. So the GPS pod went back to Amazon and I expect refund in the next few days...

Suunto GPS pod second try

2009-04-13T18:33:00.001-04:00

I have posted about my unpleasant experience with Suunto GPS pod on Suunto Discussions and asked for help from other users. It was recommended to me to give the GPS pod little longer to get better satellite lock and put the GPS pod on the same arm as the watch. I did all this prior to my long run this Sunday and the results were much better this time. As you can see from this picture.

While the pacing info is not as good as from calibrated foot pod it is certainly much better than what I have seen in my first attempt. I have not lost connection between the watch and the GPS pod in the whole 2 hours of the exercise which is good. But what really bothered me was that the pace on the display of the watch was pretty much unusable. But I'm getting little ahead of myself. Let me start with this - I had a long run scheduled for Easter Sunday and I put it off until afternoon. I figured that there will be quite a bit of traffic on the roads I usually run so I took the running to Lehigh Valley Parkway. It is a nice park with great trails on rolling terrain. I thought it will be better for my knees and ankles than the roads. I wanted to test the GPS pod, but I also had second watch RS800cx with S3 foot pod to validate the pace. Well that was the plan anyways. When I was getting ready for the run the RS800cx would not link up with the foot pod (turned out to be a dead battery). Well great I thought, now I'll need to pace based on this GPS unit that I do not really know all that well. After about a mile of glancing at the pace it was clear to me that pacing with this GPS pod will not work. Instead I relied on the perceived exertion and my heart rate. Main reason for that was that the immediate pace in the park was jumping between 9 minute mile and 12 minute mile on my steady pace effort that I would estimate was more around 8:30 per mile. I was not that far off with my estimate - the pace was actually 8:20 which I figured out when I got home. The funny part is that while the pace jumps all over the place the distance gets recorded accurately so you can validate the pacing after the run. This is actually good exercise in listening to your body. I noticed that I often get too hung up on what the watch tells me and listen to my body less than I should.

After all the workout turned out to be a great success - not only did I do the work. I also validated that my perceived exertion is pretty much spot on - I had to run 60 minutes at 8:10 - 9:10 per mile which turned out to be about 8:20 based on the distance. Then the plan called for me to pick up the pace to 7:15 - 7:30 for 30 minutes - which turned out to be 7:33 and then I had 6 pickups to faster than 5k pace with 2 minute recoveries and 5 minutes cool down. After I got home I found out that I did quite well even without the watch telling me how fast I ran. And to some degree it was much better workout - I kept listening to my body and pushed through the rough spots during the session. You know, like when you feel the muscle fatigue that slows you down and you push through it and 100 meters later it feels ok again. I'm thinking about using the GPS pod for this type of workout again to see how my sense of pace improves over time.

What looked like a messed-up workout in the beginning turned out to be a great session. It was excellent practice in pacing without the feedback from the watch. "If life gives you lemons make lemonade," and as Ron White said on radio when I was heading over to the Lehigh Valley Parkway "make sure to find someone with vodka to have a party!".

Brandywine Duathlon course profile

2009-04-09T23:19:00.001-04:00

In case you wanted to do this duathlon next year this post shows the race course including the elevation profile.

The first picture shows the GoogleEarth map of the entire race course. The run course is on the right side of the map with all the lap markers. The bike course is the big loop around the run course. The different colors show my HR zones, and should give you a pretty good idea about the hills. The climbs are where my HR went up (yellow, gray) and descends are where I got back to green.

Second picture shows the detail of the run course. Don't get confused with all the lines there - I ran the course twice and since the course is a big reverse T there are quite a few lines. The details of the run course are included below.

The elevation profile below shows the entire course. The run course is on the first about 22 minutes which took me to run the 5k and get through T1. The next 43-44 minutes show the bike course and the rest is the repeat of the run course on the second run. As my speed/distance unit gave out on the second run I can not show you the course profile over distance, but only over time which may distort some of the hills. But here are some figures that will make the course little easier to read.

The ascent on the bike course is about 300 meters (980 ft), the biggest climb is approximately 100m (330 ft) over the 2.7 km (1.7 mi). But you can see that there is hardly a flat section on this course where you could just fly. Well on those this year there was pretty strong wind (we were lucky that the race was not on Saturday when we had much stronger winds in the area).

The run course has ascent of about 70 meters. The course is basically either downhill or uphill. There is no real flat section on the run course that I noticed. What is really challenging on this course is the sequence of the rolling hills - you start downhill and turn right onto a trail road with plenty of little stones that make the footing pretty challenging. Then run few uphill and dowhill segments, loop around the campground and head back. When you get back to the road you head to the other side of the park on the road. This is downhill followed by a slight uphill and then false flat section to the entrance to the pack. Turn around the cone and head back to the start line. Which means climbing all the way up (notice the climb on both parts of the run.

Suunto GPS pod - first run - not so good

2009-04-09T22:51:00.001-04:00

Few days ago I saw a good deal on Suunto GPS pod on Amazon and decided to test it out. It arrived last week on Friday, but I did not get to test it until today. Well I could have tested it during the Brandywine Duathlon, but I did not want to use new equipment for the first time in the race. Probably good I decided not to do it.

I actually did a pseudo test with the Suunto T6c + GPS pod and Polar RS800cx + G3 on the day I received the GPS pod. But it was not a real training test. What I did was to put both GPS units in my car and then measure the distance from my house to meeting place with few friends. The result was pretty good - the distance came to about 0.08 difference over 26 miles. Not bad. What I did not look at was the speed reported by the unit during the drive - I had to pay attention to where I was driving.

Today was the first real test of the GPS pod with T6c in an easy recovery run. Plan was to run at 8:30 - 9:40 pace for about 20-25 minutes. Easy enough to pay attention to what the GPS unit does and how well it reports the instantaneous pace. I started the GPS pod inside the house and set it by the window until it acquired the signal and then I walked out of the door. The GPS pod blinked like mad so I assumed it lost connection and I stopped for about 30 second and let it get satellite lock again. When the blinking slowed down I started moving again. The pace was all over the place and quite often I lost connection and the pace was showing -:--/min which is not very useful. On top of this the first 4 minutes the comfort belt rebelled and locked my HR at 180 beats which is quite impossible for me since my max is about 8 beats lower. After the run I looked at the exercise file and was not surprised to see this:

The top graph is HR, middle line is EPOC and the third line is the pace. It is really a sad picture. I looks like the GPS pod was either losing connection to the satellites or to the watch. I do not really know what was happening, but most of the time my pace was showing -:--/min which does not really tell you whether the satellite lock is gone or the connection to the watch.

If there is a GPS pod user out there that has working GPS pod I would want to know how you use it. E.g. how long do you want before you start moving? Are you wearing the pod on your arm? Same arm as watch or it does not matter? Any other hints will be appreciated. If I can not sort this out over the next few days I'll just pack the unit and send it back to Amazon for refund.

Fighting through rough patches in the race

2009-04-08T11:01:00.001-04:00

This post is not about me. This post is about importance of fighting your way through the rough patches in races. I just read about Matty Reed race in California 70.3 this past weekend. If you have not heard the story - here is condensed version. Matty was first kicked in the face during the swim and later had asthma attack (still in the water). That is one rough start of a race. But he fought through this rough patch. During the bike he moved up to third place and on the run moved all the way up to the front. He crossed the finish line with 2 minutes lead on Andy Potts. That is definitely way to fight trough adversity.

Way to go Matty and great start of the season with securing second win in second race - no less than first attempt at 70.3. I wonder whether we will see Matty in Kona later this year. Many ITU athletes are making this move.

Suunto what is it up your sleeve?

2009-04-07T22:19:00.001-04:00

Suunto launched a new tease campaign today - they will be launching a new device that will be announced on May 26th. The teaser site is live, but does not reveal much. From the looks of it the unit will have most likely GPS built in and if I would have my way it would be a cross-breed of X10 and T6c. But we will see what is really coming out. You can check the site by clicking on the picture below.

Suunto will also be selecting few people to let them play with the device before the official release and report about them on the web. Well I sent my entry in and will see if I get lucky and get my hands on one. That would be cool especially if the device helps with training and can be worn during races. You know me - gadget freak all the way. Stay tuned to this site and also keep checking the Suunto site for more news.

Mad rush called duathlon - Brandywine Duathlon race report

2009-04-06T23:00:00.001-04:00

This morning I completed my first ever duathlon and as Craig said these things hurt. They actually hurt like hell. If you think triathlons are hard I have a surprise for you - duathlons are harder. But they are a lot of fun as well. In case you never raced duathlon or even did not hear about the format. It is almost like triathlon only the initial swim is a run. Actually some triathlons may be turned into duathlon if the conditions for the swim are not optimal and race director decides that it is unsafe to swim. But back to the duathlons.

The race I did - Brandywine Duathlon - is 5k run, 13.2mi bike and 3.1mi run. The course for this race is quite hilly both on the run and bike. The run is on mix of road, train and packed gravel (which I don't like too much). First half a mile is nice paved road that then turns to trail with bunch of stones and path without stones. At about 1.75 miles you are back on road running all the way to the transition area. The run is kind of interesting - the loop is T-shaped so it is pretty hard to gauge where you are in the second half of the race (not that it would make much difference this time).

The bike is 13.2 mi loop around the lake with mix of long gradual hill climbs, few flats and many steep descends. Great course to test what you can really do on the bike and how well you can climb. It is hard course to race especially if you pace the bike incorrectly your run will suffer quite a bit. The descends are good to get your HR down and I reached peak speed of about 40 mph on one section so it is comparable to Anthracite Tri. Only on Anthracite Tri there is one or two climbs and the rest is pretty bearable. This course seems like always uphill with few short steep descends. Very nice course.

The second run is on the same course as the initial run with finish line just slightly below the transition on downhill slope so if you still have some energy left you can finish strong by just keeping your legs turning.

The duathlon is totally different animal than triathlon mainly due to the fact that you need to be careful to pace your first run to get to the bike and still be able to ride.

Craig suggested changes to my original (overly optimistic plan) and I was to go out at 7 minute mile for the first 1.5 or 2 miles and if I felt strong or there were enough downhills to pickup the pace to 6:50 before the end. The run course was pretty much up and down all the time. Not many long downhills to pickup speed. I passed the second mile marker at 14 minutes and was quite happy with pacing. I probably lost few seconds on the last mile as there was much more climbing than on the first part. I finished the run at 22:40 which is slightly off pace, but good.

My T1 was just OK. It took me a little time to get my helmet and shoes on which gave me 1:06.

The bike starts on flat and downhill soon turns to steep climb to a curve after which the climb continues into downhill, and so on. Basically all you need to know about the bike is that there are very few flat sections and we had the pleasure of riding into the wind on those sections. I passed quite a few people on the bike, but I did not count them as I would on little easier course. Also I had to pay more attention to drafting violations as the course speeds-up and slows down everyone pretty equally and at times it was on the edge to keep the distance between the bikes. Two or three times I just pushed the pedals little more to pass the folks before the climb to prevent any penalties. The worst part of the bike ride came at around mile 4 or 5 on the flats when I got cramp to my left calf shortly followed by cramp to right calf. I had to pull to the side, slow down and stretch it out. The cramps came and went away in waves for another 3-4 miles and were quite annoying. Not too bad to prevent me from going, but bad enough to slow me down. I guess if you do duathlons it is good idea to do some reverse bricks to get used to this type of stress. One other thing I did on the bike was to try to follow the power zones plan as closely as possible - stay under 265 for most of the ride and not go much over 300 on climbs. Which on this course means sitting on the climbs and spinning them. I was riding granny gear on all longer climbs and interestingly enough was riding as fast as folks that stood up on their bikes. I got passed by about 3 folks on the bike that looked really strong. One guy that passed me on the longest climb had a jersey that read 'US National Duathlon Champion'. I kept up with him pretty well on the climb and noticed that he stayed in his aerobars and was in easy gear. So there is something about keeping the gearing easy on the bike leg and spinning it up to save legs for the run. The bike leg was relatively short and the 13.2 miles were over soon. I got to the bike dismount and braked with my front brake little to harshly after I jumped off the bike. The bike was in the air, but I just lifted it and kept running to T2. T2 was fast and I was on the run course in no time. Well in 43:31 of biking and 40 seconds in T2.

The second run plan was to keep at 7 minute mile for the first half and then pickup the pace if I can. The first half a mile was fairly good although my legs felt like jelly - the usual bike to run transition. I was also running close to red line. At the aid station I tried to get a sip of water - that was a mistake. I had to slow down to about 20 seconds walk to keep it down. Then I gradually picked up the pace and at that point my watch stopped to show my pace. Earlier in racing I would freak out, but not these days. I just decided to run the redline - basically run as fast as you can without throwing up (sounds gross, but that is pretty much where most people race). I got passed by 4 or 5 people in the next 2 miles and passed 2 or 3 folks - you lose some you gain some. Just shortly after the last turnaround on the road back to the finish (about 750 meters before the finish) the last of the 3 guys passed me. I decided to keep him in my sights and if I had enough in the tank before the finish to sneak-up on him. I was getting closer to him and closed the gap he built to about 10 meters before the descend to the finish line. I started sprinting, but he also had enough fuel left so I ended-up finishing behind him by one second.

It was a great race. It is definitely a mad rush as the HR gets pretty high up on the first run and stays elevated during the entire event. I had mine drop to 129 on downhills on the bike, but most of the time I was pretty high and the sprint to finish line on the downhill I was 4 beats away from my max. And yes the event hurt as well as the rest of the day (and also today). I guess that means that I gave it all I had. I'm very happy with the results. You can check out my time and few official photos on the Piranha Sports website. By the way I did not grow gut between the first bike and end of the race - the gut is actually my gloves and hat that I stuffed under my shirt during the run as I was getting warm. I have the great photos in this post thanks to Ivana who accompanied me to the race as the cheerleader and official photographer. Thanks Ivana for the support.

Random items

2009-03-29T00:03:00.001-04:00

I haven't been keeping up with this blog lately. It has various reasons that can be summarized as family, work and training keeping me crazy busy. I decided to post a summary of random items and thoughts related to training and other mostly sport activities I did or plan to do in the near future.

Let's start with training

Training has been going real well. Craig and Erica keep me on my toes and I must say that the training makes me feel like I'm building a solid engine to carry me through this season. I may have mentioned it here before, this year I focus on longer races and will be doing quite a few 70.3 races. Actually 70.3 is my focus for this year and I plan to do a long course aqua-velo race in late September as preparation for full Ironman in 2010.

Weather has been turning nicer in PA and running outside is going well. Today was my first day on the bike outside and it was a blast. I did little under 3 hours ride in the neighborhood and enjoyed every bit of it - even the climb to South Mountain. It was a fartlek ride so I did some fast climbs, easy riding, fast descends, long steady segments - had it all on this ride. Tomorrow is long run and I wonder how well my legs will carry me in steady state run with 20 minutes tempo and pick-ups to 5k race pace thrown at the end. Should be fun. Next week is my very first duathlon on Sunday. Still need to sit down and think through the race plan. I seem to do better when I have solid plan preferably with backup going into the new race format.

Quakertown 10 miler

Few weeks ago Dasa and I ran races in Quakertown. Dasa did the 4 mile run and I did the 10 miler. If you are not familiar with the area where I live let me describe it to you - fairly hilly. Locals call it PA rolling terrain. People from flat lands would probably call it bloody hilly. In any case the 10 miler was on fairly hilly terrain and it is one of the races that tests your pacing strategy. Dasa did very well in her 4 miler even though she was not happy with the hills and had to walk parts of the course. I did quite OK in the 10 miler and recorded a new PR - well I kind of expected it as last time I ran 10 mile race was 10 mi South Mountain race and that is just one hill - all the way up and back down. This Quakertown 10 miler is little easier and sports more varied terrain (not climbing up for 3.5 miles and then running back for 3.5 miles as on South Mountain). In case you want to check the terrain and my race log you can look at the Training Peaks for details.

New products from Polar

I have not been checking the Polar product pages over the past few weeks, but I remembered seeing a new add in Triathlon magazine - something about 3D training. The watch in the add looked new so the other day I browsed through the Polar running and multisport computers and noticed few new things. The S625X seems to be phased out from the product line (at least it no longer appear on the polar.fi pages. The S725X is still being offered and effectively can be used instead of S625X if you add the foot pod.

But more interesting is the new watch for recreational athletes - RS300X. It looks like a replacement of the RS200 watch, but it adds the ability to work with G1 GPS sensor for speed and distance. It seems to be geared to runners, but I assume that it can be used for cycling, walking and other activities if you use the G1 GPS sensor to record speed/distance. Looks like a nice basic no frills watch for people that want to keep their training simple and still get the benefit of speed/distance and heart rate. Polar sells the watch in few packages - base watch without any speed/distance sensor, second is bundled with S1 foot pod and third option comes with the G1 sensor. Each package contains the HR Wearlink+ belt with T31 HR transmitter. The watch comes in black or orange color (just like the RS200 used to be offered in black and red). The pricing in the US is very reasonable 170 USD for the base watch and 250 USD for one of the packages with either S1 or G1. You can actually get them for about 20 bucks under MSRP from most dealers. I hope I can get my hands on one to provide more details.

Another big news that I have not touched on is the availability of the CS600X which is an upgrade of the CS600 bike computer that enables GPS location recording (just like the RS800cx does). I have not seen the unit yet, but expect that it provides the same capabilities as CS600. From the manuals it looks like it has larger memory and few minor differences. But the core functionality is very close to CS600. Just like CS600 Polar offers the CS600X in two boxes - one without power and one with power. If you already own CS600 with power you can simply swap the CS600 head unit for CS600X (and sell the used CS600 on eBay). All sensors should work fine with the CS600X as they also use the W.I.N.D. technology. I do not believe there is an upgrade program offered by Polar in any country.

Suunto X10 and Geocaching

I have got the Suunto X10 ABC watch few weeks ago and really love it. I do not use it for running or biking (well I may take it on some bike rides or runs when I plan to get lost and use the track back home function). But I started to get my feet wet with geocaching. I'm just getting started and attempted to find only two caches. One successfully one was hidden very well so maybe next time. It is an interesting way to explore the neighborhood - I never knew there are about 20 caches in 20 miles radius around my house. What I like even better is that Ian likes it too and seems to be interested in finding the caches. We have yet to find one where we can take something (and put something of similar value back). It seems like a good fun and great way to get out of the house for a walk in the park. If you never heard about geocaching you can find more info on the geocaching.com site

Scuba diving thoughts

Few years ago when we went to Dominican Republic for vacation I got certified in open water diving by PADI. I have dived on subsequent trips to Caribbean and enjoyed it a lot. But in the past few years I have not done any diving. Last year when Erica and Craig organized open water swim in Dutch Springs I envied the groups of divers getting ready to go under. I'm thinking about taking refresher course this year and doing some diving on weekends when weather gets warmer. I'm sure I can enjoy the diving even in the colder water of PA. Obviously trip to Caribbean would be nice, but I do not believe it will happen any time soon... Any triathletes out there that also do diving? Any tips for getting started again?

Mac support for Garmin Forerunner 50 and 405 released

2009-02-20T07:28:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I received announcement from Garmin that the Forerunner 50 and 405 are now supported on Mac. Little later during the day there was a post on Garmin Blogs that explains little more about the level of support in this first release. As you may suspect there are some limitations. The current version supports upload of the workout results to Garmin Connect site. But it does not yet support updates of firmware from the PC to the watch and does not allow uploads of courses from computer to the watch. So the Mac support is there, but compared to PC users the 405 owners with Mac will still lack some critical features. The Forerunner 50 users will be happy with this release as the 50 does not have firmware updates or courses. Here is copy of the official announcement I received earlier:

Forerunner® 405 is now Mac-compatible

If you're a Forerunner 405 owner with a Mac, you'll be glad to know they are now in sync and you can transfer your workout data from the 405 to your Mac. The data transfer happens automatically via the wireless USB ANT Stick™.

Before the USB ANT Stick can start talking to your Mac, you'll need to download new software. Visit our "getting started" pages for the Forerunner 405, which will step you through the process.

Once you've completed the setup, your workout data will automatically transfer to your Mac and to Garmin Connect. On this site, you can store, analyze and share workouts with a community of fitness enthusiasts.

Few new HRMs from Garmin, Polar and Timex

2009-02-03T17:47:00.001-05:00

This is just a quick post about some new HRMs that either already hit the market or will be released in upcoming weeks. There are some exciting new HRMs in the line-up of manufacturers that will make the 2009 season pretty interesting.

Garmin - leaving the GPS out

Let's start with the recently announced line of Garmin HRMs that are not sporting GPS capability. The FR60 that will come in mens and women version is HRM with ability to connect with ANT+ heart rate belt, foot pod, bike pod and cadence pod from Garmin. The watch will have standard set of features including ability to record up to 15 hours worth of workouts and capture 100 laps. Just like the Forerunner 405 this watch will connect wirelessly to your computer and transfer data to Garmin Connect site. According to the materials available on Garmin Blogs and Garmin site the watch will not support Training Center and programmed guided workouts. The watch should hit the market in Q2 of this year.

Polar - pushing the GPS to cycling

Polar just yesterday announced release of the CS600x cycling computer which is an enhancement of the flagship CS600 cycling computer. The CS600x integrates with the G3 GPS unit and captures the location information just like the RS800cx unit that was released late last year (and extensively reviewed on this site). The unit is sold in two packages - one with power and one without. It is very same packaging as with the CS600. None of the packages comes with the G3 sensor, but you can get the G3 sensor as an accessory. Other difference that I noticed from the comparison tool on Polar USA site is that the CS600x comes with the IR USB stick (just as the RS800cx). There are probably other differences, but they are not immediately apparent from the product description and feature list. Also I expect that Polar may make minor adjustments to the information on their website just as they did after the release of RS800cx.

Timex - focusing on the basics

Another addition to HRM line comes from Timex. The Timex Race Trainer Kit provides a good starting level HR monitor with ability to transfer data to ad from the computer wirelessly. What is interesting on this product is the fact that you are not only buying the watch, but also the access to the Timex Ironman online training site that is build on top of the Training Peaks engine. The watch integrates with the training site and according to the information available on Timex site there is ability to download workout data from the site to the watch and send the workout results to the site. Sounds like an interesting HRM for focused training. The training plans are designed by Dave Scott and Gale Bernhardt two large names in the triathlon world. You can find more details about this package on Timex site. Unfortunately I can not provide any more details on how well this package works as I have not used the watch or the Timex site yet.

Lehigh Valley Superbowl 10k 2009

2009-02-02T22:32:00.001-05:00

Like every year this past Superbowl Sunday I lined-up with 500 or so crazy runners to do the Lehigh Valley Superbowl 10k road race. The race is held in beautiful Lehigh Valley Parkway, but due to snow and ice cover on the trail the race is run in the neighborhood above the parkway. And that means hilly course. This year the race organizers needed to make last minute change because parts of the regular route were still covered with packed snow and ice. The last minute change added two pretty good hills to the course in mile 1 and mile 5 (on the way back).

Last year I finished in the top 60 and ran the distance in little over 43 minutes. This year with much better weather, extra two hills and significant patches of snow and ice I clocked in just below 44 minutes. The course was more challenging because even tough I finished about a minute slower than last year I moved up in the overall ranking to 41st place out of some 475 participants. This year the top 100 finishers got a nice black Brooks cap. I'm sure to sport it when the weather gets better.

I'm happy with the race results even though originally I was aiming to better my last years time and hoped to keep 6:55 pace. At first I was little disappointed with the result, but then I had chance to look at the run log in detail (course profile, my HR and cadence). I was quite pleased with what I saw. Compared to last year I slowed down by about 7 seconds per mile, my average cadence was very nice 94 (thanks to Newtons I wore) and most importantly my average HR was 10 beats lower than last year.

Little explanation why that is. Last year I was doing weekly VO2max work leading up to the race - for 12 weeks to be exact. The VO2max work is now completely absent from my schedule so far as I am still in the beginning of base and focus on other limiters (like muscular endurance and technique). Being only few seconds slower and keeping HR significantly lower makes me look with promise to the rest of the season. Especially to time when Craig puts some speed work to the training mix as we approach the key races. This season I aim not to peak in February or March, but rather keep the peaking for the key races in July and November. I have full trust in Craig keeping me from messing up my season by early peaks (like I have done last year).

In case you were interested in the run log - here it is as a screen shot from Training Peaks - click on the graph to see interactive log on TP.com site.

I have met at the race with fellow Endurance Multisport athlete Leah and we did part of the warm-up together. We did chat after a race for a bit, but then Leah got little chilly (I hope she warmed up in her car on the way home). I also had a great chat with Craig after the race as we were waiting for the results (no love for me - I was way down in my AG somewhere between 6th and 8th place). But I may be adding some TT bike races to my season if they fit with the key races. Still need to look at how they are scheduled and which ones I can fit in considering family commitments and my key races for 09.

Swim breakthrough

2009-01-14T22:02:00.001-05:00

Just a short post about the progression of my swim training. Erica looked at my stroke last year in September and fixed few things I discussed in earlier post. Working on these swim stroke issues helped quite a bit. Well the fact that I was in the pool 3-4 times a week since September probably plays role as well.

The more I swim the more I'm understanding the term - 'getting feel for the water'. I can now actually feel when my hand does not move efficiently or when I tilt my head or kick in the wrong way. So things definitely improved. And I also have some stats to back this claim up.

We have done testing on approximately monthly basis. The test protocol is fairly easy. After warm-up I swim 300 yd during which I build up to a pace I think I can sustain for the whole set. Then take 20 seconds breather by the wall and do 3x100 yd with 15s rest followed by 300 yd. The total time from the start of the first 300 yd to the finish of the last 300 yd counts as the test time. Here are the test results of the past tests from October to just few days ago.

Oct 18^th - 15:55
Nov 13^th - 15:50
Jan 4^th - 14:39

My 100 yd and 200 yd splits have been coming down consistently and I feel very fast in the water. Although only until there are two swim team members swimming in the next lane. Obviously doing an easy warm-up while I struggle to keep up with them. But I'll eventually get there. I met with Erica just before Christmas and she suggested few more things to work on. I'll get faster in the water. I'm sure of it.

By the way the bike and run training is moving in the right direction as well. Craig had me doing some serious bike and run tempo work on the weekends. I feel that this is going to make me fast this season. I can't wait for the first tri race which will actually be the Black Bear half ironman in late May.

Polar RS800cx or Suunto T6c that is the question

2009-01-12T20:11:00.001-05:00

How is that for controversial title? I have just recently received few question from people trying to decide between the two monitors. As you probably know I own both of them and do not plan to let one of them go any time soon. In fact I find both good at what they do, but if you have money just for one what should you do? Well you will need to decide for yourself, but this post will hopefully provide some information that make the decision easier.

I'll use the same format I used in the other comparison article in June of 2008 - Q: Garmin Forerunner 405 or Suunto T6c?. I made few changes to the T6c text reflecting my longer use of the watch. But most of it remains the same as 7 months ago. Note that I ultimately sold the Garmin Forerunner 405 on eBay after I got tired of it. I'm sticking with the RS800cx and T6c for now.

Training planning

Polar RS800cx - it will be of little surprise to readers of this blog, that I like the abilities to program variety of guided workouts in this watch. It offers so many options to structure workout that I have yet to find a workout I can not program in it. You name it - ladder intervals, sessions with various interval length, phases focusing in cadence, pace or HR. You can do it all. Do you need to workout for specific time or until your HR raises to specific HR, etc. So in training planning I really prefer the flexibility and functionality you get in RS800cx. You can define workout in the watch, but I prefer to use the Polar Pro Trainer 5 software to plan my training sessions.

Suunto T6c - has some planning capability in the software, but the guided workouts are to be defined directly in the watch. You can define warm-up duration, countdown duration (in case you want to do warmup, but not include it in the total exercise time), then there are two time intervals or you can use distance intervals (again only two). You can define how many times to repeat the intervals and that is it. I find this fairly good for less structured training sessions. So I use the T6c on simpler workouts - like tempo runs or recovery runs that are easily fit into the format of warm-up and two interval timers. (In June I wrote that I felt the RS800 was more robotic way to do the workouts - I do not feel that way these days. Perhaps I was on the edge of overtraining and needed to step back. The switch to T6c certainly helped that. These days I train with both and as I wrote above the RS800cx is for more structured sessions and T6c for sessions that have little less structure). The T6c is very similar in training planning abilities to S625X from Polar in terms of interval workouts.

Training

Polar RS800cx - what I like in RS800cx is the ability to define up to 3 pairs of shoes with different calibration factors. So you do not need to mess with the CF before each run if you decide to wear different shoes or just switch from road to treadmill. The actual execution of the training session is very well supported by the watch. It has very clear and loud beep when switching from one planned phase to another. Also the limits alarm beeps loud enough to hear it if you exercise with headphones. The watch provides information about many parameters of your session from overall perspective or individual laps. After each lap watch briefly displays the summary for the lap and if if is changing from one phase to another it shows the new phase title. This is very useful when you have multiple phases and in the middle of the exercise forget what is next - the watch will remind you. I also like the little repeat calculator in the right bottom part of the screen that shows you how many repeats of the phase or phases are remaining. It is very useful especially in case of interval training when you may miscount - yeah it happens to me all the time. Another great thing on the watch is the display. It shows bunch of data which can be overwhelming at times, so I tend to stick to 2-3 displays that I configured to provide the key information I need (jut FYI the watch has 6 displays you can configure yourself, one multi-sport display which is discussed later in this text and one display for count-down of the current phase). The count-down display shows the counter of the current phase with time remaining and information about the limits - e.g. HR, cadence, etc. Other stuff that you may like in this watch is the recording of your location if you use the G3 GPS sensor, recording of cadence both in cycling and running. There is more about this unit in the three detailed articles I wrote last year after I had the watch for few weeks. I will not go back to that discussion here.

There is doubt that this watch provides the most functionality out of any HRMs I owned so far. The only missing piece is the automatic switch between the sensors - like from bike to run. But the watch manages that OK. You can stop the exercise, switch to the other sensors and start a new session. The watch will prompt you if you want to combine exercises and if you do so it shows a new display for multi-sport workout. The display shows overall time, distance and calories burned in the combined session. You can combine multiple sessions into one and then review them later in the software.

Suunto T6c - works like a charm for running and biking (and with memory belt also OK for swimming). The watch is able to automatically switch between sensors (pods) if you use multiple in one session - bike pod, foot pod, GPS pod. Like in the triathlon race. The comfort HR belt is very nice - I find it even more ehm comfortable than the Polar WearLink+ and it works very well once you figure out which part to moisten. The watch has configurable screens - 2 screens 3 lines each and the last line can show multiple items that you can switch between. Other that that the watch displays the EPOC and TE on the fly, but I find these values less accurate than what you get later on the computer.

The really cool feature of this watch is the automatic switch between the sensors. I did a brick session and it recorded my bike speed / distance (as 18mph), then I did a lap for transition and headed out of the house for a short run. Before I hit the street it was already switched to my foot pod and was showing my pace 18:30/mi as I walked and soon 7:45/mi as I started running. It is pretty cool to see this working after struggling with this with Polar, previous Suunto and Garmin. This may not be as important for single sport athletes, but quite nice for triathletes. Especially if you want to have one less thing to care about in transition. That is also one reason T6c will remain in my collection. I plan on racing with it again this season.

Evaluation of training

I guess this sentence from original article summarizes it well: "Well compared to Polar software both Garmin and Suunto have a long way to go."

Polar RS800cx - Polar Pro Trainer 5 offers certainly the software with most bells and whistles for analysis of single workout or reporting over a defined period of time. I love the ability not only to define own sports, but for each to set the speed/pace units that I want to see in the graphs, different HR zones for each sport and the ability to define my own reports and customize how they look. You can easily take any set of HR zones and synchronize them to your watch in case you wanted to switch between them for cycling or running session. The calendar view and summary for the week is also quite useful and shows you actual vs planned - number of exercises, training time, distance and actual burned calories.

I also like the way Polar stores the log files in individual text file. I can modify the logs if I need to correct data from the session. Like this past weekend when I had an occurrence of CS600 not connected well with my HR belt. After the session I had all HR data in RS800cx log and all the power, cadence, speed data in the CS600 (but no HR). I simply took the logs opened them in text editor did one large copy/paste and saved the log. Everything was saved and I could do the analysis I needed to do with HR, power data. While I had few cases when CS600 did not capture my HR data I never had issue with RS800cx. If you are interested in R-R data analysis the RS800cx can capture the data and you can later analyze them in the Polar software (which has very limited analysis functions) or load them to other R-R analysis tools like FirstBeat Athlete or Kubios HRV.

Suunto T6c - the biggest difference between T6c and other HRMs is the analysis of your workouts to provide EPOC and TE. The standard STrM software does the basic analysis and shows you the data recorded by the watch - R-R data, HR, speed / distance and all the parameters the software calculates based on the R-R. I use also the FirstBeat Athlete software mostly to help me look at my EPOC load during the week and month. The STrM is not as flexible as PPT5 and while it allows definition of multiple sports it supports only one set of HR zones. I find the analysis capabilities of the software little limited compared to PPT5. The only exception is the TE and EPOC that Polar does not provide in their software. But if you use the FirstBeat Athlete you can get the EPOC and TE post workout if you load the R-R files to the software. I found the fine tuning of the parameters for the accurate EPOC/TE calculation somewhat complicated when I first got the watch. But that is no longer the case since Suunto published the manual from Eddie Fletcher that describes how to best setup the watch. Key is to determine your activity class based on your weekly training load and your VO2max either via lab test or based on field test or race result. The manual provides great examples and makes setting-up the watch much easier than before it was published.

Daily use as a watch

Polar RS800cx - I wore the RS800sd on daily basis for over a year and the RS800cx is the same 'format'. It fits well under shirt and can be used as daily watch. It is just a tiny bit smaller than the T6c, but it is hardly noticeable. The alarm of this watch works fine and can be snoozed for 10 minutes if you want to get more sleep.

Suunto T6c - It is a watch that you can use daily. It fits under the shirt and goes with pretty much any outfit (especially the black version that is not as flashy as the Fusion). I pretty much alternate between T6c and RS800cx as my daily watch. I do not mind wearing either one of them. You may prefer Suunto if you need multiple alarms to get out of the bed - T6c has 3 of them, but does not offer snooze.

Cost

Note that this section reflects the situation as of January 2008 and that I looked at prices on US market. The prices are likely to change over time so do your research, check sites that sell Polar and Suunto watches. I also strongly recommend to only buy from certified distributors and resellers of Polar and Suunto to prevent any warranty repair issues. Both Suunto and Polar confirmed in telephone that they honor warranty from Amazon.com where I made most of my purchases in the past few months of HRM shopping.

Polar RS800cx - the watch alone is now about 400 USD + tax. You can also buy a package with the watch and either S3 sensor for running (470 USD), multisport package with G3 sensor for 470 USD or bike package with bike speed sensor for 430 USD. The additional sensors go for 140 USD for the S3 foot pod, 130 USD for the G3 GPS sensor, 55 USD for cadence WIND sensor and 55 USD for bike speed sensor WIND. Do your math before you buy as certain combinations of packages and additional sensors could be less expensive than others.

Suunto T6c - The watch sells for 335 USD for Black version and 350 USD for Fusion version. The foot pod for 80 USD, bike pod for 50 USD, the road bike pod for 57 USD and lastly the GPS pod for about 150 USD. Suunto also offers various packs with T6c - Triathlon pack with all you need for triathlon including memory belt for 660 USD, Running pack with T6c and foot pod for 470 USD and Multisport pack with GPS sensor (does not capture location) for 530 USD.

Conclusion?

Well you will need to make one for yourself. If you can go look at both models in the store or at the race expo and test them out before you purchase. They are both very good HRMs and will help you structure your training. As for me I'm going to keep both of them on my wrist as I train. One at a time to be exact. I will cotinue to use the T6c for less structured sessions and RS800cx for sessions that are more complex. I will continue to run road races with RS800cx and do triathlons with T6c. Let me know if this helped a bit in your decision making.

Update (13/1/09): In case you want to read more about the RS800cx you may like to review few earlier articles on this blog:

RS800CX - more detailed review of the functions I.
RS800CX - more detailed review of the functions II.
Analysis of training data (part 3 of RS800CX reviews)

There are also few articles about Suunto T6c that I published earlier.

Protect your investment

2008-12-31T19:38:00.001-05:00

So you have got yourself the gadget you wanted so much. Now you are starting to use it and discover its capabilities. You exercise with it and sometimes even wear it the whole day. That's all good and well, but did you happen to think about protecting your investment. It is no fun to find dings or scratches on the watch face after just few weeks or months of use. I actually experienced that first hand with the Suunto T6c Fusion I bought earlier this year. The watch suffered two dings and few small scratches on the face, even with Suunto stating that the watch has mineral glass that should be fairly resilient to abuse.

Most of the newly designed HRMs leave the watch face unprotected. Older models like Polar S625X, S725X, Suuto T6 had raised edge that protected the watch from accidental hits. The new watches like Polar RS400, Polar RS800 / RS800cx or Suunto T6c do not have this protection. While I have only the best experience with durability of the RS800 model I did not want to take any risk with my new gadgets. Looking through the discussion forums I came across ZAGG Invisible Shield protection foil. Apparently this is thin plastic foil that you install on the face of the watch and it will protect it from accidental damage. It does not protect any other part of the watch, but in my experience the glass is what gets damaged most often. Few weeks ago I installed foil protection on my new Suunto T6c and about a week later I got another foil to protect my Polar RS800cx.

The installation procedure is very simple, but you will want to plan about 15-20 minutes for it. You will also want to do the installation in the comfort of your home or office. You will also need to have very clean hands when installing the foil - it may be easy to get your fingerprints all over the foil or watch if you do not clean them up front. You will also need to clean the watch from any sweat or smudges before you begin. Then follow the instructions and apply the provided spray on your hands. Spray the foil and put it in place. Then slowly and diligently press out the bubbles out of the foil and make sure it fits well. If you do not get it the first time just take it off and start over. I had to repeat installation on the RS800cx three times before I got it right. With the angled face it is somewhat more difficult to install the RS800cx foil that the T6c foil, but ultimately they both get installed in about 10 minutes. After you are happy with the install, dry off the remaining spray from the watch and set it aside for few hours. ZAGG recommends 12 hours, but I used mine in workout the next morning after the install - so about 8-9 hours later with no issues. Below are two pictures - first one of RS800cx with the ZAGG foil and the second Suunto T6c with the foil. Note that the pictures are extreme close-ups of the watch. In reality you can not see the edges of foil on any of the watches.

The foil works fine during the day. You can not really see that the watch has a protective foil on its face unless you are looking for it. In low light conditions the Suunto T6c gets little dim as the back light seems to be weaker than to one on RS800cx. I used the watch during ride to the shop in the evening and it was little hard to see the time when I switched on the back light (note I did not even try this while running when the watch actually flickers). Otherwise I did not determine any issues with the protection foil. I have exercised with both HRMs inside, outside and wore each one of them for few days as a regular watch. I highly recommend the 10-20 bucks investment to protect the watch that is most likely 20-30 times as expensive to replace. ZAGG also makes protection foil for cell phones, MP3 players and computers. But I have not tried one yet. If I were to buy a new iPod today I would definitely put Invisible Shield on it to protect it. It would prevent bunch of scratches that I have on my iPods after the abuse they get through during the almost daily use.

Location info on the Polar RS800cx

2008-12-30T21:44:00.001-05:00

This is just a short note for the few people that are interested to see how the location information appear on the screen of the RS800cx during the exercise. As I wrote in my other articles here, here and here the RS800cx tracks location, but it does not display map or outline. It only shows the location coordinates as captured by the GPS unit and the number of satellites it has acquired (lower right corner). Below is the picture of the location screen.

You can access this screen from the pre-exercise or exercise pause screen. You get to the pre-exercise screen following ways:

Start from time screen and click the red start/lap button once. Wait for the unit to connect to the HR belt and then scroll to options and make sure the GPS is on. Switch on the G3 unit and wait for the watch and unit to start communicating. Once the connection is there and G3 acquires satellites the watch will display message 'Satellites found'. Now new option 'Location' appears in the menu. When you select it the above screen will appear.
Second way to get to this screen is from exercise mode. We assume that you exercise with GPS switched on and that the GPS unit communicates with the watch. Press the Stop button once to get to the pause screen. Then scroll down to the Location option and it will give you the location information.

It is fairly easy to use although it provides only basic location data. I do not really use this - well maybe except than to check whether the G3 has satellite connection and how many satellites it acquired. From Polar materials it is clear that the watch is not capable of navigation like the Garmin HRM units (Forerunner 305 / 405 or Edge 705) or X9i / X10 from Suunto. But that is not what it was designed for. I guess what it means is that if you seriously need navigation capabilities you may need to look at other unit or get a backup GPS navigation unit in your backpack. These days they put the GPS chips into pretty much everything. I have one in my cell phone, I have seen them in kids shoes and even pet collars.

Christmas gifts and little about running shoes

2008-12-25T23:44:00.001-05:00

First of I want to wish every reader of this blog a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope your holidays are peaceful and that you are enjoying time with your family as much as I do.

I love going to the Christmas tree after dinner (in our tradition we open presents after dinner on Christmas Eve). It was great day for all of us and we found really nice gifts under the tree. One of the gifts that may interest readers of this blog is pair of new running shoes (surprise not a new HRM - although I got one for Christmas as well and I'm very grateful for it). But back to the shoes - I wished for a pair of Newton running shoes - the neutral racer to be exact. And that is exactly what I found under the tree.

The shoes come with a pair of Newton socks and a little bag to carry them. It is a nice touch for such high price item. I took them for a short spin today. It was a nice day for running with temperature around 5 degrees Celsius with little cold breeze so it was fairly nice out and the roads were not as messy as they were over the past few days.

Today's training session consisted of 15 minutes of warm-up followed by four sets of faster than 5k pick-ups with 2 minutes of easy running and closed with about 5 minutes cool-down. The shoes are designed to promote mid-foot strike which I already have so it was very easy to get running in them and it felt even more natural than in regular running shoes. I felt the extra padding on the mid-foot which actually feels quite nice during the run regardless of whether it is flat, up or down-hill. I took picture of the sole if you have not seen it (I mean this is by no means breaking news the shoes have been on the market for quite a while). Another thing - these shoes are feather light. The shoe is way lighter than my Nike Zooms that I used for up to half marathon races and feel like the Newtons provide better padding. It feels like having additional spring under my mid-foot.

Here is the detail of the forefoot area with the orange lugs that make you land on forefoot.

But back to the run. I found myself to be quite fast already during the warm-up. The 1 mile segment that is first downhill and later uphill usually takes me little over 9 minutes. Today I did it in 8:30 and had to remind myself few times to slow down. Amazingly my heart rate during the whole warm-up did not go over zone 2 which shows that the shoes are fast while not making you work harder. I guess I'll need to observe this more, but it seems like the shoe helps you be more economical. E.g. I was running faster than usual with HR lower than usual. Obviously there may be other explanations like the fact that I'm more rested now in the off-season. That's why I will look into this more and report back.

On the pick-ups I was able to pick the pace quite comfortably and the run felt very natural. I was landing perfectly on my mid-foot. Again not a big deal for me since I run like that even in regular shoes, but in the Newtons it feels more natural. It is probably due to the lugs on the mid-foot. Overall I did about 4 miles in them and felt very good. I will post any new findings as I progress to wear these wonders. Until then I give the Newtons a big thumb up.

TrainingPeaks now support mapping for Polar RS800CX

2008-12-19T16:46:00.001-05:00

I wanted to blog this few weeks ago when the development team of WKO+ and TrainingPeaks contacted me if I would test some RS800CX related functionality for them. But back then I promised to keep my mouth shut until they had a final version of the WKO+ and announcement ready. Oh well then there was the marathon in Philly, lots of work in the office and all of a sudden we are few weeks later and I'm only getting to this.

It was more of a coincidence as I raised a support ticker with the Peaksware about the ability to import location data from RS800cx to WKO+ and TrainingPeaks. I wanted to use the functions they provide for any GPS logs like fixing the elevation data. I was pleasantly surprised when the development team contacted me few days later and provided early version of the WKO+ that supported the direct load from RS800cx to the WKO+. I did some test runs and loaded them to the TrainingPeaks and it all looked good. My only reservation is that the resulting log when loaded to the website shows only location information with no details about lap times, lap location, etc that you can get from PPT5 and GoogleEarth. So the result is not as useful for log analysis as what the PPT5 or WKO+ offer, on the other hand TrainingPeaks has ability to share workouts with others via e-mail or Facebook. So if you use WKO+ and TrainingPeaks you get best of both worlds - analysis of individual laps and ability to share workouts with others. With this functionality in TrainingPeaks you can easily link to your workout or race record from Facebook or send the log to your friends via e-mail.

Don't get me wrong I like the TrainingPeaks log viewer as it provides quite a lot of data for everyone to look at - practically all data your HRM can capture and if you want to re-live the entire 4 hours of your marathon experience (or whatever event you did) you can chose to view it as a replay at the same speed as it was recorded (or speed it up if you do not have 4 hours to watch...). I just wish it also showed lap times and added lap location to the map - perhaps in the next update (I hope Peaksware team reads this)..

I have captured recent race with RS800cx and loaded it to the TrainingPeaks. Click on the picture below to view the TrainingPeaks log if you want to see how the log file looks once it is loaded to TrainingPeaks. You can play around with it,no worries I will not see what you did and you can not mess-up the workout log. It is only a viewer after all.

If you wondered about what Polar offers - well currently there is no support for location info on the Polar Personal Trainer site. The only HRM company that I know provides similar service at no cost to users is Garmin with their Garmin Connect site. I used the site when I had Garmin 405 and did not find it very useful beyond sharing the workout data with friends. I much prefer the combination of training planning / logging site with ability to share info than site that is built to share data only. But the Garmin Connect site is quite nice and many users find it sufficient for their needs. I only hope they already fixed the bug with average speed/pace that only took the last lap into account so your tempo workout showed overall average pace that was equal to the last lap pace. Perhaps Polar will introduce mapping and sharing capability over time as they seem to be re-working the site quite a bit. But I don't really know if I would use it since I'm already loading my data for my coach to TrainingPeaks...

Just keep swimming

2008-12-13T00:15:00.001-05:00

Well the title says it all - after the marathon Erica and Craig had me swim a lot and do some biking. I have been in the pool three times every week and I really enjoy the swim sessions in the pool. Erica keeps my swims interesting and mixes in a good balance of drills, speed work and longer segments. But we keep everything under 300 yd in one go which is what I need. I get easily bored.

One of the interesting elements we did this week is the Locomotive which keeps the 300 yd interesting - basically the locomotive is alternating easy and hard pace on increasing distance segments - you start with 25 easy, then do 25 hard then repeat the ez/hard for 50 yd distance and last the same for 75 yd. You can also do reverse locomotive which is the same drill in reverse - starting with 75 hard / 75 easy and so on. I really like these ez/hard combinations. They make the time in the pool fly by so fast. I have been really enjoying the swims this time of the year and like the way I'm getting the feel for the water. I can actually feel the water as I swim and feel the difference between different positions of my hand on entry and pull, feel the water resistance depending on how my body is positioned and recently I started to get hang of the kicking. Kicking is something that I still need to work on quite a lot as I tend to not kick much during the swim. And yes my times for 100 yd swim have been dropping down which is great. I hope this will continue through out the winter and my swim will get better in next season.

Should you update T6 to T6c firmware?

2008-12-11T22:19:00.001-05:00

In recent weeks I have been writing a lot about Polar HRMs. Today we will change tune a little. Some of you may remember that I have pretty large collection of HRMs including few from Suunto. This post is about the upgrade of T6 to T6c firmware.

Few months ago Suunto Finland started offering update of firmware for the T6 owners. It is offered as for a fee update that costs either 79 EUR for the firmware update or 99 EUR if you also want to get the comfort belt along with the update. That os very nice price considering the Comfort belt sells for around 79 bucks at the Suunto dealers.

The upgrade has been offered to European users since September or so while US based T6 users had option to either wait until Suunto builds the capability in the US or take the plunge and buy a new T6c (and hope to sell T6 on eBay for more than few bucks. About a month ago I sent question to Suunto inquiring about the possibility to upgrade. The help desk suggested that the service is not yet ready in the US, but that I can send my watch to Finland. It was a no brainer for me - the T6 functionality is nowhere near the T6c so the next day my T6 was packed, properly insured and sent off to Suunto service center in Finland. I checked tracking info few times during the following week to make sure the watch made it to Service center. Then I forgot all about it and carried with my training using the Polar RS800CX.

On Friday after Thanksgiving Suunto called me to get the credit card number and make sure I wanted the comfort belt as well. They took the CC number over the phone, ran it and then told me that the watch should arrive some time during the following week. It actually took only few days before DHL showed on my doorsteps and handed me envelope with upgraded T6. Suunto sent along instructions for pairing the watch with pods and first of the two books that they ship with T6c. I started setting-up the watch - as you could expect the memory was completely wiped clean and I had to set it up like a brand new watch. Which is really just a matter of few minutes if you know all your parameters. The key i to set User parameters like birth year and sex which should be no problem for most; height and weight can be easily measured; activity class is easy to deduct for your individual level of training and performance. Max HR can be tricky, but Suunto gives you initial formula that you can fine tune based on lab result or observed max in maximum intensity workouts and only METs need to be determined based on race performance, 12 minute test or lab testing. It is few more parameters to setup as the T6c not only measures the HR, R-R and other data. It also calculates EPOC and TE directly in the watch. Once I set the watch up (including adjustments to units, time and recording parameters) I paired it with the foot pod and memory belt. Then the watch was ready for the recovery run I did later in the day. As you could expect it performs exactly the same as T6c. The only difference between the two is visual.

Following are few pictures of the black T6c and the upgraded T6 in case you are considering the upgrade. On first one the T6c on the left and upgraded T6 on the right side. (note that the extra icons on the display are due to different parameters set on each watch - the T6 has alarm set and T6c has HR limits warning on. If I set them both the same way they would show the same icons in the same places).

Next photo shows the T6c in close up. Notice the three icons on the left side of the bezel - they indicate the three possible displays - time, display 1 and display 2. There is no baro/alti position and function on this watch (compared to T6).

On this picture you can see close up of T6 in time mode. Notice that the watch has four icons on the left side of the bezel - only three positions are actually used in T6c firmware. There is no alti/baro function any longer after the upgrade.

Here is T6 in Display 1 - searching for HR belt and pods. Note that the middle icon is selected (the one with the heart).

This is the same picture only on Display 2 - see the little dot on the left side of the display indicating Display 2 is selected.

You may be asking if you should update your watch to T6c firmware. I hope the pictures above and following description will help you make that call.

If you want the T6c and are willing to pay for the update this may be the cheaper way than buying the T6c and selling the T6 on eBay. Although Amazon had some great deals on T6c on Black Friday when the watch was to be had for 213 USD shipped, but now they are back to 305 USD. You may not like the update especially if you used the baro and alti function in T6 a lot. You will lose it with this update. Also if you used the numbers on the right side of the display to understand the settings of the watch you may miss that as well. In the T6c the numbers on the right side of the display indicate the TE as you go through the workout. So those are the negatives for long time users of T6 (not really negatives for me). If you do not use the alti/baro or can live without it I would recommend the upgrade. You will gain quite a lot through the update and will have a brand new watch with following functions:

ability to use comfort belt,
ability to pair second HR belt with the watch like memory belt,
ability to switch between the sensors without any user interaction,
better structure of the menu - you can actually find things in this one, customizable displays.

Overall I like the updated T6 much better that the original one one. But I never really used the baro and alti standalone functions (note that the altitude is still shown on the time display and captured during the workout).

So what do I you need to do to get this done. Well as a first step get in touch with Suunto Help Desk and ask them for address and paperwork needed to get the upgrade done. I had to prepare a simple letter describing what I wanted to be done and fill-out form for import duties and taxes declaring that the watch is being sent to Finland for repair and will come back o the US. Then pack your watch carefully and send it off. I suggest not to include your credit card number in the package - you never know where that package may end up. And you may also want to insure the package just in case the watch gets lost - I recommend to insure it for 309 USD so you can get a new T6c from Amazon if your trusted T6 does not make it to Finland. Then patiently wait for Suunto to call you for CC number and in few days after that you will have your own new T6c in package that you like. The whole process took less than 14 days for me and I have shipped the watch on Thursday night and got it back on Wednesday morning in less than 2 weeks.

I know for the price of the shipping and upgrade you can get a new T6c and sell your T6 on eBay. That may be the other option if you want a brand new watch with full 2 years warranty. It is entirely your call.

2009 - the season of half

2008-12-10T14:58:00.001-05:00

Like most athletes on this side of the globe I'm enjoying the beauty of the off-season. With all the key events out of the way I'm already looking into the next year. After evaluation of this year I decided that the next year focus will be on the half distance or 70.3 if you will.

There are few reasons behind this decision - first and quite important one is that I just love racing this distance. It is challenging enough, but it does not wipe you out for many weeks. This past season I was actually able to finish two 70.3 races in the same month without much suffering (well if you do not count the gash in my leg I suffered in the second race in bike crash). Second reason is that you can actually train for this distance on fairly reasonable schedule. Which means that you can still keep your job and maintain reasonable level of social life. You do not need to become training and race goals obsessed as with full Ironman training. It is all about balance.

I already discussed the preliminary race schedule with Craig and ran few ideas by him over the past few weeks. After the first discussion I already secured spot at my key race which will be a new venue for me - Ironman 70.3 in Rhode Island. I have read few good reviews of the race and I wanted to try one of the officially sanctioned events next year. It is within driving distance which was also something I considered. Prior to this race I'll do Black Bear half ironman which is pretty tough course, but that is a race I wanted to do. I like killer courses that thrash you - I did the Black Bear sprint this year and did not do all that bad considering the total meltdown during the swim. Plus CGI always puts on great events. I'm considering few other 70.3 races in the region one of which is Quakerman half which I have raced in the past two years and always had a great day securing second spot in my AG. Leading up to the Black Bear I'll do few running races 10k in February, half marathon in early May and I'd like to do mid-May duathlon in the area where I live. But that may be a challenge to squeeze in with the half marathon and half ironman on both ends of month of May. I'm still likely to do the Anthracite Tri which is Olympic distance course on tough biking and run course - well it is in Poconos just like Black Bear and the hills are just hard to avoid in that area. I may do Steelman Olympic distance race and I'm still looking for late season half to close off the season. I may do the Beach to Battleship half if I can find money to get there with my family and bike.

The season plan is not all locked down, but I already have few key races I'm aiming for so my training can start taking shape again in early 2009 to get ready for the bear...

No HR in your CS600 log? Resolution is here.

2008-12-09T18:03:00.001-05:00

Several people in Polar forums reported issues with CS600 logs not showing any HR and RR data. It seems that there is a bug either in the transmission from the watch or in PPT5. I discovered that you will not any HR if you start the HRM before the HR shows on the CS600 display. Member BorutV confirmed that the logs staring with few zeroes are not displaying any HR in PPT5. In any case there is a workaround. Just follow these simple steps and you should get the log with HR and RR data without any issues:

Wear the HR belt
Press the red button once
Wait for the HRM to find and connect with the belt - basically until the HR appears on the display
Now you can press the red button again to start the exercise

How to run marathon in 3:55 when you shoot for 3:30

2008-12-08T20:49:00.001-05:00

Few days after completing the marathon in Philly I wanted to find answers why I did not have the race I wanted. I did a full review of the race, looked at my heart rate monitor log from the race and mentally walked through the whole race. I summarized my findings and ran them by Craig who confirmed most of them and added few findings to complete the picture. Here is the summary of what made the day go the way it did. I made some rookie mistakes and paid for them dearly. I suggest you review this article before your next marathon. It may help you get a better race.

Prepare good race plan - I had a very basic race plan going into the marathon and as the day unfolded I found the race plan was not thought through well enough to carry me through the day. I did have just plan A. I did not have plan B, C and D as I usually have and had to change things on the spot as the race went. You may know that the longer you run the less you can rely on thinking clearly. According to Craig I did pretty good job reacting to the circumstances and changed the tactics according to conditions. I also pushed through the rough spot between miles 18 and 21 when I felt really bad. I may have performed better if I had more detailed plan. But it is hard to build one if you do not really know what the race will be like. Just like my first HIM race I blew-up on the run. But next year my HIM was without any blow-ups. I'm learning by mistake.
My water intake during the race was not sufficient. The cold weather made me think that I do not need to take in water. I should have drank at least a bit at every aid station instead of sticking only with the Perpetuem mix I had in my bottles. According to Craig I took in more than enough carbs (actually about 40 calories per hour more that I should have) and not enough water. Which made me feel bloated and and my stomach was full of fluids that were not processed. I should have stuck with my other fuel belt with two large bottles or I should have drank water at the aid stations.
Never try to play catch-up during the long distance race. I mentioned in my race report that I had to stop at around mile 10 for quick bio break. I lost contact with the pace group and at that point I got the stupid idea that I can catch-up with them by picking-up the pace a bit. It was actually quite easy as from the point I took the break the road was downhill. This was by large my biggest mistake of the day. I looked through the log and it looks like I just killed my race on that downhill. I basically ran too fast down that hill - from average pace of 8:00 min/mi I sped up to 6:40 min/mi on the downhill. Yeah you read correctly I was running at higher than my 5k pace race during the marathon. Silly me. About a mile after that heroic effort (after I settled back to 8:00 min/mi) I had to take a walk break. First of many walk breaks.
Get better clothes that protect from cold wind. I believe I ran in enough clothes for the race conditions, but I did not account for the wind especially on the stretch on Kelly Drive. Although I had base layer, warm compression shirt with long sleeves, long sleeve compression top, long compression pants and two hats (one for wicking the sweat and one to keep me warm) I never felt completely comfortable. I was more on the cold side the entire race. I think I should have had either different base layer (the one I had feels cold against the body) or I should have a wind protection layer. I will need to experiment with this during the winter.
I need to get better timing of the bathroom breaks. I should have used the time after warm-up to get to the bathroom. That way the 10mi stop would not be necessary. Well I just hate the porta-potties lines at race venues.
Hard races at the end of long season are not easy to prepare for - I had hard time getting my head in the game for this one. I posted comment in the original race report about this. As I said I did not want to break the 3:30 bad enough and was not mentally ready to push very hard. If I run another marathon I'll be better equipped.

So there you have it. In case you wanted to look at the breaking point in my race here are two pictures - first one shows the altitude, pace, heart rate for the entire race and the second one zooms on the critical part of the race. E.g. the part where I stopped for bathroom break and then sprinted down the hill. I still can not comprehend what I was thinking at that time. Another reason to have good race plan not to kill your race before the half point.

So there you have it. If you can prevent the above mistakes I made - especially trying to play catch-up you will do better on the race day. Good luck everyone.

Kicked asphalt - or my first marathon

2008-11-24T11:43:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I ran the Philadelphia marathon. What a great race during which I got my ass kicked. My goal was to keep the 8 minute per mile pace and finish at 3:30. I felt great during the first 10.5 or so miles and kept-up with the 3:30 pace group. Actually the 10 miles passed like nothing and I did not even realized we were already running for 1 hour and 20 minutes. The crowd support in the city was just amazing. Then I had to take a short bio-break and fell about 2-3 minutes behind the pace group. I resumed the pace and picked it up a bit on the downhill to bridge the gap. I ran another 2 miles at about 7:30 to 7:45 pace and could see the 3:30 pacing group balloons in distance. But then I had to slow down and take a minute walk. Not sure if that was mental or the increased pace was getting to me. I resumed running again and started to do math - you know like when you should be running and instead you do a lot of thinking. Yep - that was the mistake number two.

I decided that maybe I should forget about the race time and try to enjoy the time outside. This may sounds like a mistake, but I consider it one of the best decisions of the day. Then I made a pact with myself - I'll run for a mile (or about 7-8 minutes) and then walk for one minute. And I'll keep doing it until the end of the race or until I pass out. And so I did it (well I finished not passed out). It worked quite well until about mile 19 where I needed to extend the walk to 2 minutes, get gels, electrolytes and water to regain composure. For some reason it was hard for me to keep hydrating - the weather was cold and drinking cold water was not helping much.

After mile 19 it is all a big blur - beer aid station, the crowds cheering all the way on the main street in Manayunk, somebody handing out brownies, gel aid station, someone playing harmonica (or was I just dreaming at that point?), thinking about how bloody hard this marathon thing is, cursing myself for signing-up for it, and then being happy that I'm part of something this big. Wow it was emotional roller-coaster. In any case run-walk worked very well and although I was slowing it was not that bad. Around mile 23.5 I got passed by the 3:45 pace group and just knew I do not want to cross the line with next pacing group (the 4:00 crowd). I dug deep, still did the run-walk but tried to do more of run and less of the walk. Then it was only a mile and I could feel that the end is very close. The last kilometer was just plain amazing, people cheering, all the noise and I started to pass people that were struggling on the uphill. I guess the run-walk method saved me some energy for stronger finish (it was not a strong finish, I just had little more in my tank than the people I passed).

I crossed the finish line in 3:55:06 (chip time) and was glad that I was done. First thought after crossing the line - OK next time I'll be better prepared and do the 3:30. Now only if my legs did not hurt so much and my ankle was not giving me the trouble. Congratulations to everyone who finished yesterday. It was quite cold one for my taste - especially the stretch by the river.

If you want to check the details of my race here is link to the GPS map and other stats.

One addition that you can not miss - as you can imagine we have heard the Rocky song more than one time on the race day.

And now something completely different... Suunto T6 firmware upgrade

2008-11-19T16:01:00.001-05:00

As the title indicates I will not talk about Polar in this post. I actually have news about Suunto this time. As you may remember I kept the Suunto T6 as my backup watch. Last night I sent support request to Suunto inquiring about availability of the firmware update from T6 to T6c. This morning I received a response suggesting that while the upgrade is not available in the US I can send my watch to Finland to get the update done. So this morning I filled-out the required paperwork, packed the watch and sent it off to Finland. I'll report here when I receive it back.

If you are considering this step note that the procedure is relatively expensive - shipping with tracking number via FedEx is about 60 bucks (this is the most economical way to ship with tracking and delivery in few days) and the upgrade itself is 79 EUR for the firmware upgrade or 99 EUR if you also want to get a Comfort Belt with the upgraded watch.

You may be asking why I do this. Here is the reason - this past season I raced with Suunto T6c and like the functionality of the watch for racing. I was little disappointed with the durability of the T6c watch though. When I compared it to T6 the watch face was not as durable as the previous model. I also liked the color, design and feel of the T6 on my hand better than the T6c. The T6c ended-up on eBay and I kept the T6 as a backup watch. T6 functionality is little flaky compared with the T6c firmware and I never really had success in using it in race to record the whole race without a glitch. So the ideal watch out of the two is the hybrid - T6 model with the T6c firmware. I may stick with it for races. But I'm sure I'll keep training with Polar as it has more functionality to help me structure the training sessions. I guess this will be the big decision for next season when we get close to the first race. Plenty of time until then.

Anyone running Philly on Nov 23rd?

2008-11-11T23:18:00.001-05:00

I have not talked about training lately. But since my bike accident in late September I have been trying to get back to marathon training. I had two rocky weeks when I was suffering from cold. But I have been back on the road in the past few weeks and completed some tempo runs and long runs. With one long run little shy of 3 hours just this past Sunday.

Am I ready to race in less than 12 days? I guess I'm as ready as I can get. And I'm sure Craig has some more fine tuning in store for me. I'm ready mentally and that is what counts. I'll go out there and run as good as I can. It will be my very first attempt at the marathon distance so I take it as much as a learning experience as a race with the clock. I have my goal, but I'll be flexible and adjust as the day goes (and that means both ways). I learned on the long runs that the going gets tough past the mile 16, but I also learned that you can keep pushing and it gets better (not necessarily easier). So with the few days to go I continue running, biking and swimming. I hope to see some of you down in Philly. If you see me say hello as I do not necessarily know you :-).

I'll be in Philly on Saturday afternoon together with my support crew - my son, wife, mother in law and a friend of the family. Anyone staying over night in Philly and wanting to get together for a chat or sip of pearly water let me know. I'm chicken the night before race - no need to inflict more pain by bad habits than what the distance causes itself. But I'll for sure get a glass of good red wine the night after the race. Do you know any good restaurants downtown that accommodate larger group with a kid? I'd like to get some good, but light meal and get good sleep. It does not necessarily need to be Italian pasta, but I'm not really looking for steak house either... See you down in Philly.

Also I plan to be at the expo on Friday between 2-4pm let me know if you will be around we can meet-up and chat before I hike back to the woods north of Philly.

Calibrating Polar foot pods

2008-11-10T22:43:00.001-05:00

This past week there were few discussions on the Polar forums about the calibration of the foot pod with Polar watches. It does not really matter which watch you have S625X, S725X, RS400sd, RS200sd, RS800sd, RS800cx or the new FT60 or FT80. If you use foot pod you will get better results if you calibrate it. With all foot pods in the industry it is true that they are sensitive to your running style, running form, surface you run on, type of the course you run on, etc. Over the years I found that for the best results it is good to keep track of most common calibration factors for combination of surfaces you run on and shoes you run in. I keep a running tally of calibration factors for all pairs of shoes I run in and generally keep at least two calibration factors (CF) - one for running on my treadmill at home and one for running outside on the road. I do not do much of trail running, but if I did I would keep that as a separate CF.

All depends on how much accuracy you strive for. The S1 and S3 foot pods from Polar will give you result within the 5% range of accuracy out of the box. That may be sufficient for some folks, but if you want to be more accurate I suggest to calibrate. All Polar HRMs I used so far let you calibrate the unit by either running pre-determined distance and then correct the lap distance manually or by manually adjusting the CF. I prefer the manual calibration. In order to determine the new CF I run known distance of at least 1 mile. Sometimes I take the measurement multiple times to get better feel for the accuracy. I record each calibration run in a spreadsheet and look at the new CF from the run (or multiple runs). In case I have multiple runs I may take average of the CFs or eliminate the obvious error CFs and take average of the CFs that are quite close. Sometimes you may hit the lap button too early or too late and that may mess-up the CF calculation.

Actually I have a mile long distance measured from the corner of my street to another corner and I use that for all my outside calibration runs. That makes it easy to repeat the calibration when I need it - even like the day before the race if I want to be 100% sure the calibration is OK.

If you want to be super accurate - which may be important for some track workouts you will want to run mile repeats at constant pace and record the laps at different speeds - like 8 minute mile, 7:30, 7:00, 6:30 and 6:00 or faster. Your CF may be slightly different for different speeds, but this is too anal even for me. I usually run with just the CF for combination of shoes and surface. Most of my calibration is done at pace between 8 minute mile and 7 minute mile and they work quite well even for running intervals at 6 min mile. Especially the S3 foot pod is less susceptible to pace changes and accelerations / decelerations that the S1 does not handle as well. The S1 may not give you 100% great distance in interval run - it is best to calibrate it well for the interval part of the workout and just ignore the pace / distance recorded in the recovery sections of the workout.

If you are calibrating on treadmill it is best to use the exactly the same treadmill every time. If you go to the gym you may need to repeat this for few machines as they tend to be quite abused and each may produce different results. You also need to understand that all you do in this process is that you are calibrating your watch to show the same numbers as the treadmill - no guarantee that the treadmill itself is accurate. They quite often are not. If you run for a week in a hotel - don't even bother to calibrate. It is pretty much waste of your workout time. The calibration itself on the treadmill is easy - just hit the lap button at some nice round number, keep running until you ran 1 mile (or longer) and then plug-in the number to the spreadsheet and you know the new CF.

I use the spreadsheet I was referring to in the text above - you can download it from my website. It is very simple and all it does is that it takes your input of the actual distance, old CF and watch displayed distance. I then tells you the new CF and % accuracy of the previous CF. I use it to fine tune my CF over time. If you do this over time you may achieve quite good accuracy. I ran 5 mi race last December in which I had recorded 5.03 miles over quite varied terrain - hills and flats on the road. Now we can discuss whether it was the CF fine tuning or just dumb luck. I'll let you judge it.

Remember that the CF is quite important if you use the software like WKO+ to calculate your intensity factor and TSS as for running. The software uses normalized graded pace to determine how hard the workout was - if your calibration is off you may be working at lower or higher intensity than what the software tells you.

OK so you have determined new CF - what do you do with it? Look at your manual and follow the instructions to change the manual calibration factor. Most Polar HRMs support only one CF at the time so you will need to remember to modify it for each workout. If you have the new RS800CX it allows you to maintain up to 3 pairs of shoes each with different CF. I currently use two pairs of shoes for my running - one is calibration for running outside and the other one for running inside on the treadmill at my house. In other cases like the RS800sd and RS400sd you can define different sports and assign the CF to the sport. When you then define guided workout remember to set the 'Sport Profile' field to Sport-specific settings which will pick-up the pre-set calibration factor from the PPT5.

I hope this helps people deal with the calibration topics. Let me know if you have any questions.