Radical Fitness Proposal

Yesterday I did my long run on the treadmill at the Y. When I was about 8 miles in, a woman who looked to be at least 30 pounds overweight got on the treadmill to my left. I'd never seen her before, but that's not surprising as I don't keep track of everyone who enters and exits while I'm there.

She turned to me and I saw her lips moving, but couldn't hear her over my music. I took my headphones off and said, "I'm sorry--what did you say?" She said, "I'm going to look like you in 6 months."

My immediate reaction was just to smile, and why not? I was feeling pretty good considering on the way to the Y I was seriously considering bagging the run altogether, as I was feeling the effects of 6 consecutive 16+ hour training weeks. It wouldn't have hurt at all to skip the run, but I really wanted to swim a little, so I had to at least show up, and once I got going, I felt great. I forced myself to start out slowly and decided I would "reward" myself with some Coke after 30 minutes.

After I collected my thoughts, I replied to the woman, "This took about 20 years," which I'm pretty sure took her by surprise. I know many people focus just on how it looks, not the infrastructure behind it such as the cardiovascular fitness, strength training, attention to diet, etc. Still, whenever someone asks me how long it took to achieve my current condition, I typically say it's a work in progress, but that so far it's been about 54 years...

I realized that what I said to the woman might have sounded a little stand-offish, so I then said, "But it's never too late to start, and I thank you for the compliment and good luck with your goals." She then proceeded to start up the treadmill at a pretty slow pace to just walk, and I gave her a few minutes to get going and try and do it right, but she was holding on!

I figured since she struck up conversation with me that I now had the green light to offer some advice. I took off my headphones and started gently with my usual joking around of, "Is that how you walk outside? Do you have a walker?" She said no, and then I did my usual spiel. I did something new this time, though, and said, "Let me show you how to walk with good form." I now realize that many people don't know how to walk! I slowed down my machine to 3.8mph and demonstrated--head up, chest open, arms relaxed--basically good posture moving forward. I told her that many people get this idea in their head that if they make the machine go so fast or on such an incline that they have to hold on that they aren't getting the workout they imagine and that they need to first learn how to walk at a pace where they don't need to hang on and can do it well.

That woman let go of the machine until I was finished, and then I went to the track to finish up my own run. As I was running around the track, I saw many people walking. Some of them clearly were not there to exercise, and some of them had absolutely horrendous posture. I'd say that maybe 15% of them were actually walking with good form.

And so I've figured out my next career--teaching people how to walk. Think about it--the number of kids who still walk to grade school is way down, many kids drive to high school, and then the amount of walking people do just goes down from there. When you walk a lot for transportation, you learn to walk fast, you learn to walk with good posture--because if you don't, it really doesn't work so well.

And then people get older and fatter because they are eating the same amount and not even walking anywhere. And then I see them on a treadmill giving it the old college try only they don't know how to do it properly. Or they sign up to train for a marathon where they are hoping to run but they don't even know how to walk properly.

Isn't there an old saying that goes WALK THEN RUN? Maybe I'm onto something...

After I finished up my running on the track, I went back into the cardio area and saw my new best friend on one of the weight machines. I didn't have time to walk over and show her the proper way to use it, so I just made a thumbs up sign and said, "Keep it up!" I'll just wait and see if she shows up again next Sunday. Wait until I let her in on the huge secret that the way I look is more a function of how I eat than how I exercise!

Season Totals and a Good Recovery Week

In case anyone is wondering what it takes to win 5 sprint races and a 1/2 Ironman, set a new Ironman PR and beat the crap out of a double Ironman over 4 days, here it is:

Season Totals	09/15/2008-08/30/2009
Swim:	459718 yards (260.91 miles) in 158.77 hours
Bike:	Approx. 5910.305 miles in 329.66 hours
Run:	Approx. 1355.22 miles in 208.26 hours
Strength:	52.84 hours
All Sports:	Approx. 7526.44 miles in 749.53 hours; approx. 333461 calories burned
Stretching:	99.29 hours. Massage: 49.25 hours

Ladies and gentlemen: That is the most biking I have done in a season ever since I first began doing triathlons! That is what got me my Ironman PR. It's not the most total hours for any of the sports--it's that I got faster biking, running, and I guess a little bit swimming, although the swimming wasn't so much reflected in my racing. The most total hours of training I've done in a season was from 2003-2004.

Looking ahead to Ultraman Canada, I've sketched out a training plan that gives me 858 training hours between now and UMC. If I follow conventions about how much I train and how much of an increase I should be able to do safely, I should only to up go 825 hours for this new season. I suspect that as I go back through what I think I need to do between January and July that I will be cutting a bit here and there, since there are 3 weekends where I want to do a huge swim (6000 plus yards) and long ride (2.5-3 hours) on Day 1, a long ride (7-8 hours) Day 2, and a long run (2-2.5 hours) on Day 3, and I'm sure I will need more recovery from those training bouts than I think! The jury is still out on retaining a coach, but I feel pretty set in what I've scheduled through Goofy Challenge.

Still, the whole deal looks pretty daunting and even scary on paper. Which is what I expected it to be. I would never have expected to do the same amount of training as I did this year or that I've ever done to complete an Ultraman. I really can't do much more training during the week than I already do (I can do 10-12 hours depending on where I am in my cycle), but somehow I will need to try and manage a little more if I want to get in 2 long runs, 2 long rides, a huge swim, 2 more swims, 1 more shorter ride, and 3-4 more shorter runs. For May-July, anyway. Before then, I will stick with a proven training pattern that has worked for me that has me swimming and running M/W/F, shorter quality rides Tu/Th, a long ride on Saturday plus a little transition run (I don't really need to do brick workouts for Ultraman), and a long run on Sunday.

But it's pretty exciting to look at my plan so far, and yes, it's nutso.

Back to this past week. I didn't try to do what I did after IMLP since I don't have another Ironman coming up anytime soon, and I had never done a double Ironman either, so I have been careful about my recovery this week. I only did 2 swims, but got in some decent biking. I thought that I should at least do some walking today, and it looked like it might rain, so I got started around 9:30 just walking around the block where I live, and then I did a couple of repeats walking up and down the hill from my house. I have to say, walking is boring, but I have an objective to get faster at it, since I will be doing a good amount of it during the North Face 50-miler at least, and maybe some during Ultraman--who knows?

I really had wanted to go to Greene Valley and go up and down the huge hill maybe 5 times, but in retrospect, I'm glad I stuck close to home for the first hour or so, because I didn't really need the mega-hill workout this week. After I walked almost 5 miles near home, I worked some more on my training plan, watched the weather, and decided it was going to be nice and so I headed to Greene Valley around 12:30 (Yes, I am a slacker today sleeping in and taking my sweet time!).

I knew it was a mile up the big hill since I'd ridden it last fall, and while I really want to run up and down the hill, today was about just getting time on my feet. So I walked up the first time with camera in hand, and it took about 15 minutes, not bad for climbing! I took some nice pics on the way up and while up top, since you can see a lot of the surrounding area including where I live:

heading up--you can see the rise in the hill

a car heading up to the top (for some perspective)

more cars

getting near the top--it's getting steeper now

This is up top--a military plane of some sort kept circling the area.

This is looking north and east about where my house would be by that water tower about 1/3 across the top

Looking down at a car coming up

Looking to the north and east--you can see the tower in Oak Brook that I've climbed before and is also where I used to swim in the basement years ago

Not sure where I'm looking here

Looking south and west

Looking north

The second time down the hill, I ran easily all the way, and it was totally fun! I've always wanted to run up, though, and I will do that in a few weeks. There are a bunch of flat trails in this forest preserve, so I'm going to make heavy use of it in the next 4 weeks, weather permitting, so I can run some flats, run some hill, and then hike hill and look out over my dominion!

I ended up walking 9.5 miles today. Somehow it doesn't feel like a workout, but it's not bad considering I did walk at a brisk pace (14mpm overall). Still, I need to get faster at the walking thing, and hopefully I will do that soon enough.

Tomorrow I have a day off and will swim, bike and run. Oops--a triathlon, I guess! No, I will be taking some time in between efforts and just enjoying the day.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend as much as I am!