Splitting The Difference

Today, I did a double session: a strength ride session, and a swim session. Both emphasised strength even though I am on my final tapering days towards the next 226K-triathlon challenge. I had to postpone my session on Wednesday due to work, and Tuesday was a rest day after last weekend’s inception of tapering. Last Saturday, I completed three hours with seven (K) loops of Selarang (a popular route with cyclists). This evening’s swim with two Ironman 70.3 finishers and one Kona age-group world champion was a motivating one. I will receive personal instruction for my swim when I prepare for Ironman Switzerland on 15 July.

Some of my team-mates for Ironman New Zealand have been keeping active, too, although with a less structured routine. The simple approach is to reduce mileage (distance) and maintain intensity (if not increase it slightly). Coach has me doing short intervals as my main sets, using half-Ironman pace. The purpose is to challenge the body to accustom itself to varying bouts of intensities during race conditions. Also, I need to fully rest and recover before the big dance at Lake Taupo.

Updates on IMNZ preparation: I had my custom-made Elite Custom Razor bike built up. It does not look spiffy (yet), and looks like a prop from the Rock Horror Show. Yet, it retains most of the parts of the last bike, save for the damaged frame and aero-bars. You could say that it looks constructed from washing-machine parts (with a respectful nod to the ‘Flying Scotsman’). I hope that tomorrow’s two-hour ride will have me settle quickly into the seemingly, aggressive aero-position. I was riding roadie-style on my back-up Orbea Vitesse since my bike crashed, and road mostly upright on the bullhorns.

I will follow up with a brief report on the Duathlon race happening tomorrow on the East Coast. I am giving it a miss, although I would love to race. A dropped bottle-cage cost me a podium finish, and I was left with a sixth position in my highly competitive age-group last year. Stay focused on IMNZ, I will.

Ambiguous Anagrams and Atmospheric Anomalies

How’s the weather? It rained overnight – sustained over 48 hours – and now we glimpse a punctuated sigh of arid relief. Funny how we like to wish for opposites when we are racing for we - homiothermic creatures - abhor extreme weather conditions. I moderated my warm-blooded, body temperature today with the ambient cool winds, afforded by the torrential downpours. You have got to be creative when you face variations in the external variables: weather, stock markets, delivery schedules, late showings, people’s moods and reactions, and misplaced parcels.

I was examining my EDGE wheel-set when I realized that its logo was an ambigram. An ambigram is word-picture that reads the same upside-down. If you remember well, the word Illuminati was featured in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. 

Here is an ambigram of my name that was designed by a secondary school student.

Sun Microsystems’s logo is an anagram.

An anagram is a word that can be reconstructed from the same number of letter. Thus, Scrabble is a game of figuring out the highest scoring word for the longest word you can propose while sorting through the ambigram-ic possibilities. Twitter is a derivative, in that you squeeze up to 140 characters in each tweet, within your précis writing ability.

It is always good news when a fellow multi-sport athlete is featured in the newspapers. Here is a winner at last week’s Duathlon.

*****

I could not attend this evening’s TriFam club swim training, as I was preparing for a new workshop tomorrow. Instead, I did a short, intense session of unshod intervals (4:55-5:20 minute/K) with a short CrossFit Endurance training session. Since it was my second self-prescribed session, I did three sets of [push-ups, chin-ups and step-ups (off a bench)]; I topped it off with core exercises that included the Plank, and proprioceptive work (close-eyed, balancing). That took the wind out of me, and I then walked back as a cool-down. I wolfed down several slices of pizza and a generous helping of raw-fish salad as my post-training, recovery meal. Early to bed should see me fresh tomorrow with a lower heart rate, and better muscle tone.

Afterthoughts About the Singapore Duathlon 2011

The reality about races is that you have to take it for what it is worth. You sign up, and you race with the caveats. Despite the sad excuse for a race-kit, I made race preparations, and slept for eight hours. I arrived 90 minutes before the race, racked my bike, and greeted familiar faces. I acknowledged Craig Tucker, who was next to me, and reminded him that we both had Elite Bicycles.

Richard Leong, elusively, captured me on his camera while I was running my first 10K. I promised him that he would see his tri-suit design on me in this race. One spectator called me ‘Schneider’ as the company’s name was distinct on my heaving body. I decided to run the first run leg (4 loops of 2.5K) in a conservative 46 minutes, as I did not want to blitz my leg. Already, from the rising heat and humidity, I knew that this race would feel long and unforgiving.

The bike leg caused me the most grief. In the past, this popular bike route tested newbies who crashed and injured themselves taking the curves. This year, the critical area was removed, although that did not remove the jinx. Six loops of the 6K-circuit saw two fallen riders on my first loop. I swerved clear of them, allowing my riding muscles to accommodate the new workload. I found my rhythm and speed at sections of the course, although the headwind met us, straight on, in the first-half of the circuit. I sat on the aero-bars as it gave me brief respite, and compose myself for the slower, crowded sections on the remainder of the loop. I focused on doing all six loops, and not get penalized for miscounting.

My second run of 5K saw me start off with heavy legs; this is why brick-training (back-to-back disciplines) is a critical component of training. However, I soon found them worthy enough to kick out a sub-5 minute pace, overtaking a few of my age-groupers – it was my consolation for a hot day. Up till now, I consumed fluid at each aid-station, and opted to forgo the last two since it would barely matter much. I, gratefully, attempted to sprint after another age-grouper in the last 100 metres although it was futile; the lad had a far better kick at the end. I congratulated him, collected my finisher medal, got my champion-chip removed from my left ankle, and grabbed my bottle of water and 100-Plus. I bumped into my friend, Wan Yang, who returned recently after graduating from an Australian university. We shot the breeze with his girlfriend as we received the incoming finishers. I had another photo opportunity when the trio from Crazy2Tri returned: Reese, Ivan and Lawrence. Hopefully, I may get to wear their group colours at a future race.

I met my Monday swim group, who finished with some annoyances. Most of them cramped on the ride, and my conjecture was that they attacked hard on the sharp turns, and their calves surrendered. I met Muscle Poon and his friend, Alex (who did a 39-minute, first 10K); Poon got a podium finish!

To borrow a quote from Matthew, who did the Desaru 100K-ride today, ‘You got to be happy about that!’ Although I was not fast enough for a podium placing I was glad to race with the big boys. I learnt what to focus on, in my lead up to my A-races.

Have a good week ahead!

Photo-credits: Reese of Crazy2Tri (group photo); Richard Leong (run photo);

Working the Angles

When I was working as a journalist, I learnt very early in my career to work the angle for stories. What this simply means is to find interesting perspectives for the piece I was doing. I had a certain knack for stories, opting to explore the road less travelIed. It was not difficult, when all I needed to do was put a spin on the obvious, or focus on the elusive. I, eventually, learnt as an industrial psychologist that humans sort through priorities that include people, place, events, time, objects and knowledge.

Predictable can be safe, but boring. In a fastidious and fickle-minded world we live in, consumers want to do more with less, convenience with lower risk. However, this may lead to depreciation in value. More customers will be asking the question: What makes you different from others? How can you make the difference in our business? Is a sports event without a key sponsor valued highly than one with an anchor sponsor? Is loyalty of fans be unfazed when race-kits provide only the minimal? What is the angle when there is no official race-tee?

Innovative practices require working the angles. It is about shifting perspectives towards more useful outcomes. Traditional thinking demands traditional answers to problems, whereas contemporary thinking focuses on solutions-based approaches. Have you substituted, combined, adapted, amplified, eliminated or rearranged anything? What else have we not done yet? What else could we attempt differently? Who can we turn to for expert guidance? John Cooke blogs about perspective from his book review.

What’s will be your angle tomorrow?

***

Today was a busy menu for me. I rode 75K in the morning, and ran unshod (with VFF) for about 10K. In between, I collected my race-kit for next week’s Duathlon. I met friends from Crazy2Tri as well Ironman finishers Victor Chan and Teryn Tham. I encouraged my Crazy2Tri to consider using High5 sports nutrition pack that was on introductory promotion. The science is that you can absorb up to 60 grammes of carbohydrates in a 2:1 mixture of glucose to fructose, instead of 30g! For $25, we received the Marathon Race Pack with 12 sachets of drink mixes and gels. I first saw this pack at the Berlin Marathon. On its cover are three triathletes, including regular podium/Kona finisher John Hill, who I met through Coach at IMWA last year. Our individual race waves are 11, 12 and 13 and it will take place near midday next Sunday. It should be an interesting day to race; I assure you a complete race report with photographs.