Keep it Coming and Skinny Rant

I guess I should change the title of my blog again. Turns out I am not slacking at all--I am just not formally training for an Ironman. But I like knowing that if I wanted to do one in 3 weeks, I could show up and do it! That is a little scary, but I guess why I am generally very calm. I may not be fast, but I know that I am very fit, and I intend to stay that way for at least a few more years.

I have been so sleepy this week, I mean just needing to sleep a lot. I am getting better about recovery time. I don't need but a few days of nothing or almost nothing and then I can pretty much return to the state of training I had been sustaining. I ran on Wednesday, and my legs felt like total crap, but getting a massage that evening must have flushed all the remaining race toxins out of my legs because I felt just fine yesterday morning.

When I started my bike workout yesterday, I was wondering if I could cut it--if I could hit FT watts after a pretty hard effort last Sunday. I lengthened my warmup a bit, which I think was a good idea, and then when it was time to turn it on, oh yeah baby, I had the watts. Empirically, I think my FT is up about 5 watts; at least it's good enough to make me work harder every session. I only did 3x8' (2') at FT, but I really worked it for those 8' intervals--189, 192 and 189 normalized watts (my most recently tested FT value was 177, but these are short intervals, but still I think my number is up). And then follow that by 7X30/30's (30 seconds at VO2Max pace; 30 seconds easy), and then finish up at HIM watts. Can you say calorie burn?

Yet my legs felt pretty good after all that yesterday. Today I swam, and the main set was 40x50 (10"), alternating hard 50 with easy 50. I tell you that is a lung-buster workout. You think you are getting rest on the easy ones, but as you keep adding them up, you have to work harder on the fast ones. What fun!

I was on the fence about doing any weights this week (and I'm undecided to what level I want to keep them up from here on out), but thought that doing some would help get me out of the funk that I'm in, and besides I consider strength training important as I move some muscles in planes that don't normally get used in the triathlon sports. So I did about an hour.

Then I had to run. Today's workout was: WU: 10' Easy, 6 x Strides, 5' Steady with excellent form MS: 4', 6', 10', 6', 4' @ 5k pace with 1' Steady between each. CD; 10' Steady. Oh great I get to run a 5K plus today! I was uncertain whether my legs would be up to this workout, but as always, I cranked it out, even though it was about 95.

Tomorrow I "only" have to run 1:30 and then Sunday I'm riding 100 miles and running :30 off the bike. A relatively easy week, but here comes the pain starting next week: I will be biking about 250 miles a week for the next 4-5 weeks. My self-imposed BIG FUCKING BIKING MONTH!

Included in there are a 300K and 200K ride. I suspect my running will take a back seat, but what the heck, I've been doing a lot of running this year. After that, a cheesy HIM and then a build for my last A race of the year--Miami Man, and then a short rest and train for Goofy Challenge.

OK, I said I was going to rant. I read on another blog a rant AGAINST skinny people. I guess I fall into that category now. But I was not always skinny, and I don't consider myself fast, well maybe as a cyclist I am now, but that has been due to extremely hard work. It has taken me years to change my body composition to where it is today, and that has also been hard work. It has involved becoming aware of nutrition and what I am putting in, what I am burning, and how they affect one another. I have made it my business to understand how my body uses energy. Along the way, I learned that if I eat pasta, I will tend to eat too much of it, and so I avoid it now. I have learned to be OK with being hungry, especially while I am training (you can't take in a lot of calories and do a hard workout--it just doesn't mix). I have done strength training consistently for 15 years, and I have trained hard and consistently in triathlon for 6 years running. So if anyone wants to call me naturally skinny and say whatever "speed" I have is because of what I weigh, I have 2 words for you.

Now in terms of my views on fat people doing triathlon (or any sport, for that matter): first, if you are fat, you know it. You don't need me to tell you that. And you don't need me to make you feel bad about it. You are perfectly capable of doing that all by your lonesome. And you also know that every extra pound you carry around is slowing you down. And that if you think that if you just train harder you will get faster, all the while you are shooting yourself in the foot if you are carrying around extra weight. So it is YOUR business to decide how much it means to you and your experience in the sport to make the sacrifices necessary to drop the weight to let your body absorb the training better and get faster, not just because you lost weight, but because all your metabolic processes (of which training is a huge constituent) will improve.

In my case, the motivation to drop weight was related to my desire to manage hard training and to lessen the impact on my one crappy knee (ACL free for 22 years now!), and then I followed that up with a couple of herniated disks, and the writing was on the wall, my friends--be small, or stop doing this sport, or suffer and accelerate damage to my knees and back! So I have some physical limitations working against me, but I never use those as reasons why my performance is not where I'd like it to be. "Oh, my race was off today because I have a herniated disk." To me it is no different if a person complains that they are not as fast as they could be because they have a few extra pounds. Shut up about it. Nobody wants to hear me complaining about my age-related disk degeneration and I don't want to hear about how you just can't seem to lose weight. Neither of us has the right to use those things as a basis for dissatisfaction in our performances. We are all doing what we can with what we've got. I've chosen to change what I was given in certain areas, and anyone can if they really want to.

I take offense at those with excess weight who feel they are being unduly criticized or punished or whatever. You are the way you are because of how you eat, and that is that. It is under your control to do something about it, and just as I cannot use my own limitations as excuses for my performance, neither should a person use their weight as an excuse for anything. Figure yourself out. Are you depressed? Are you afraid to see what you might do with your body? Are you afraid that if you drop weight and you are still slow then you will have considered your efforts wasted? I would never tell someone to drop weight strictly for vanity or to see how fast they could get. There is only one right reason to lose weight--health. Admittedly, I could weigh more than I do now and still be healthy, and I am happy that I have that "play" which will come in handy down the road, I'm sure. But for now, given the level that I enjoy training at, it is better for me to be on the light side--better to allow me to train at a high level, to recover from it, to put less stress on my digestive tract, and hopefully minimize further cartilage deterioration. And oh yeah, it can help somewhat with speed.

I am at a disadvantage in the pool, though--I have little fat for "natural" flotation, so I have to work extra hard to keep a good body position. And I'm short. Taller/fatter people naturally will swim faster than me. So should I start belittling tall people or ask for a race division for short Croatians? This is why I do not believe in Clyde/Athena race divisions. Hell we could make up a million other handicaps that people have, and one's size should not be considered a handicap PERIOD. Sure there are certain body types that are better suited for certain sports. If you don't like how your body type performs in triathlon, pick another sport. The Olympics don't give special medals to people who are doing sports with a less-than-optimal body type for that sport--I can see it now: "Gold medal in the sport triple jump for people who have no business even trying because they are too short." There are plenty of sports out there to choose from, and some that even favor a heavier physique. I have the photography book, "Athlete," and I find it interesting to see the different body types among the different sports. There are good reasons you don't see skinny people doing powerlifting and beefy people excelling at marathon running.

When I see someone who is overweight working out or in a race, I automatically assume that they are seeking health, and that they are probably trying to lose some of the weight. That is not always true, but I know it's true much of the time. I hope everyone doing sport is on a path to excellent health. But there are a few amongst the heavier set crowd that want special consideration or acceptance for their weight or they claim to have "given up" on their quest to slim down. I don't buy into that. Sometimes I think there can be a fear there that "what if I slim down and I still am not that fast?" Welcome to my world! Do it to be healthy, and if what you have been doing is not working, work harder at it. It will come. Unless you have a true metabolic disorder, well, you are exactly what you eat. Some bodies just handle it differently, and it can take work to find out how to cure a seemingly stubborn metabolism. Been there, done that!

I have to be happy with my triathlon performance given the height I was born with, but I can and will continue to manipulate the variables that I can change--my training, body composition and nutrition. I'm OK with how far I've come, and I will never have an excuse for my performance that is related to my weight, because I have taken that out of the mix.

Now I need to go eat some steak and have a beer!