3 months…

It’s official, in 3 months, it’s gonna be MY big day.

How do I feel about it ?

Scared!!

Still a LOT of work to do, a lot of hours to train, a lot of battles, a lot of pain. Talking about pain, I took my shot today. Today was my first race of the season. A “simple” 10k, downhill in the Toronto streets. I started too fast, I blew up at 5k mark, it hurts. It hurts the ego after all this training, it hurts the brain to have to shut down just only at the half of the battle, it hurts the body, just by hurting. I was mad at myself: very, very, very bad management of my effort. That’s a lesson learned.

Not so many picture as I was not in my “good mood face”.

I forgot to race smart, I forgot to manage myself, I forgot the “fun factor”, I lost it. It is still a Personal Best, it is still a good time.

A race to forget BUT a race to remember also as things I should no do again.

Keep the fun into the picture !

Help me to support a great cause

I decided I will raise funds through the Ironman Foundation. Help us make an impact in the research against Leukemia.

Some time ago, a very close member of my family past away due to Leukemia. It was sudden, it was brutal…
I wasn’t able to do anything at that time. I was clueless, I didn’t know what to say, what to do…

Today, I am fortunate enough to tackle a big challenge: Ironman Lake Placid.
This is a triathlon which comprises of 2.4 miles of swim, 112 miles of bike and 26.2 miles of run (a full Marathon).
All in 1 day for a total of 140.6 miles.

I want to make this day special, I want to help people who can’t do things like that. I want to raise money to help fighting against this disease. I want to give them hope they will heal.

Help me to raise money, help me to try to find a solution for this problem.

I want to donate 10$ for every miles I will endure during this day.

Funds collected will be donated to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada.

You can help me for this!

Will you ?

All you have to do is to go to this page:

http://ironman.kintera.org/lakeplacid2012/2h30

and to give me some money that will help research against Leukemia.

 

I will really appreciate your help and your support on this. Thank you in advance for that.

How to plan for your next race…?

Few weeks ago, I tried to explain how I was using the Performance Management Chart into TrainingPeaks to see if I was over training or not, and to track my recovery week in the grand scheme…

Well, you know what I think should be even better than this ?? Planning you training using this tool !!! Imagine, just an instant, close your eyes, you’re dreaming… In 6 months, you have your ‘A’ Race, you know, the one you’re really aiming for… Imagine if you could setup this in TrainingPeaks, and let TrainingPeaks plan your training using the PMC, setuping automatically your recovery, your blocks, how many TSS you should blow by weeks… In just a couple of clicks, you will know exactly the amount of work you will need to put on your bike, the number of laps you will need to suffer, the number of running shoes you will need to buy before your ‘A’ Race… In order for YOU to be at your peak… Imagine that… It could also be possible, maybe, to include in your fitness summary chart a forecast to show you what will be the damage in the upcoming weeks/months… ??

And now, do not open your eyes yet… Last update on TrainingPeaks, a Weather module appeared… Let your imagination do his job… TrainingPeaks could modify automatically your week in relation with the weather forecast… Why not ?? It’s crappy weather in the way, let’s plan some swim time… It’s spring time in winter ?? Grab the bike ! Same amount of TSS per week, same PMC at the end, just some optimization weather-related… You like running in the rain and swimming when the sun is there, maybe an option could allow that ?? Sounds appealing, isn’t it ??

Now, open your eyes… TrainingPeaks cannot do that… TODAY… What about in the future… ??

Oh… I wish I could be on Monday already… Why ?? I don’t know… Monday sounds like a good day to upgrade a piece of software somewhere… ;)

Will we see some of those ideas ? Only TrainingPeaks Gods know…

100 days !

Today, it’s been 100 days that I started training for Ironman Lake Placid.

92 hours of training banked so far, more than 90% on target, training wise, things are looking OK so far.

What did I learn during those last 100 days ?

  • My swim is back to where it was pre-Miami accident
  • My run and my bike are way stronger
  • It takes time to prepare for an Ironman event
So all good ?? :)
What I learned on a side note…
  • I sometime debate about a third breakfast…
  • Running shoes does not last long…
  • I no longer buy my gels  by single units but by boxes of 24…
  • Doing a nap at 6pm is not a smart decision
  • I’m scared of my Tuesday bike workout because of the intensity…
  • Even though I think my coach wants to kill me by exhaustion sometime, I always finish my training sessions, even the toughest

So now, what’s next ??

In 110 days, I’ll be competing in Ironman 70.3 Mt Tremblant, trying to go faster than the black flies…

In 134 days, I’ll be heading to Lake Placid…

In 138 days, I’ll be at the starting line of Ironman Lake Placid 2012 :)

Time is flying…

Ironman Lake Placid – Are you ready ?

Just today, I received an email from Ironman in preparation for Ironman Lake Placid in July 22, 2012.

The main question was:

So, Am I ready ?

I’ll say that the road to IMLP is long…

The run is definitively there. Speed is there, strength is here and I’m now as fast as I was last year. Now is just bonus time :)

The bike is almost at the same point as last year as well. Having a power-meter is a great tool and I can feel I’m pushing more and more the boundaries.

The swim is coming back. After struggling for a while in the pool, I’m starting to be more confident, to feel the glide, the rotation. The time trials I did last week were very promising and I’m already on top of my expected time for the swim part. Now, I have to continue to build the endurance and everything will be good to go :)

 

So, Am I ready ??

…Never been that close… ;)

TrainingPeaks feature: Elevation correction

Back in December 2011, TrainingPeaks added a feature to apply an elevation correction when you use your GPS watch to train/race.

I’m honest, I’ve never used it before… tonight. I was checking on one hill training session but was not very impressed by the graph

We can see the hills on the green line which represents my heart rate but the hills were not very present on the brown line that should represents the elevation…

I clicked on the little magical button… and…

Now we’re talking !!! :)

 

You can be ensure now that I will use this little feature more often… ;)

New schedule for 2012

I decided to do some minor changes to my 2012 schedule.

You can have access to my race schedule on the upper banner if you’re interested ;)

I wasn’t sure how to finish my season this year. 70.3 ? Full IM ? Half marathon ??

Chicago marathon registration opened last week and I saw it was almost on the same time frame as the half marathon I was supposed to run in Toronto. Without too much thinking, I clicked on register and I am now one of the few 45,000 (!!!) runners that will take part on the 35th Chicago marathon ! :)

First marathon, and it will be one down on the big 5… ;)

It’s gonna be cool to represent TrainingPeaks in front of other 44,999 fellows runners ;)

Rest Day !!

Yeah, today, after 31 consecutive days of training, it is my 1st official rest day !!!

After 140 km running down the streets, 310 km riding on the trainer and 16 km trying not to drown, I can go home and take some “me” time. Looking for it !

TrainingPeaks Dashboard – What’s mine look like ?

It’s the start of February, and like many athlete, one of the first thing I’m doing at the beginning of the month is to look at my stats of last month, ie January 2012.

I swam 16 km, ride almost 300 km and ran almost 130 km in the month. I did a nice build phase and now I’m recovering gently before starting a new phase. My form is doing very good and I can see/feel I’m already recovering after a couple of days lighter.

I can feel it, but I can also see it and analyze it :)

How do I know that ? Just one word: Dashboard !

Plenty of data !!!

This is what my dashboard look like into TrainingPeaks. It seems complex but in fact, that is very simple and easy to read once you have some tips.

Let’s starts from the top left to explain a little bit.

 

First pod: Weather forecast – Beta feature, I suppose it will be released soon

Well, it’s pretty simple for this one. Not so much to explain ;)

 

Second pod: Performance Management Chart

This looks like very complex but it gives you a simple view of your form by displaying your short term stress (less than 14 days), your long term stress (more than 14 days) and your resulting form/fatigue.

On my chart, we can see by the blue line that my long term stress is increasing, slowly but surely. The pink line is showing my short term stress is more “choppy”. It is really dependant of the type of training I’m doing, if it was a “hard” day or a “gentle” day. On this example, we can see my pink line decreasing as I’ve been off training for about a week at the end of the year. The result of those lines is the yellow one and is a good indicator of my freshness + fitness, or good form. Like, for example, at the end of the year, by skipping a week, it shows that my form increased a little as I was fresh by not exercising as much as previously. And another example, at the far right of the graph, we can see a little trend to increase again as I’m in my recovery week.

 

Third pod: Trainign duration

Well, pretty simple again. The black line represents what I was supposed to do, the bars what I’ve done. On this pod, you can choose to represent everything or separate by swim/bike/run. I choose to get 4 pods on my dashboard (Total, Swim, Bike, Run). That way, I can track and see why I felt short on a week. In that specific example, that was the swim…

 

That’s it for now, the remaining pods in another post ;)

Recovery week

This week is gonna be easier than the last couple ones.

I got fewer sessions, more easy to allow my body to recover from the last build phase. The good news is that it’s allowing me to get back in touch with some friends, drink some beers before starting a new intense 3 weeks build.

I’m still struggling a little bit to finish my schedule for the last part of my season, but I’m almost done with some surprise… maybe… ;)