Chris Tremonte

2008 Training Review

I know that intensity matters a bit more than duration in my training, but it is a lot easier to measure duration.  So here is a quick look at how 2008 compared to past years ... and how it went from month to month.

Here are my total training hours for each of the last four years, broken down by sport.  "Other" includes lifting, core strength and miscellaneous cardio (like elliptical when injured, or the occasional pick-up football/basketball game or brisk hike or cross-country ski excursion).

A few observations:

• Clearly I didn't look at these numbers before 12/31/08 or I would have done an extra 6 minutes of *something* and gotten over 800 hours.
• I had a lot more "other" in 2007 than in other years, mainly because of two running injuries that gave me a lot of rehab to do.
• I'm glad to see that Swim, Bike and Run volume all increased from '07 to '08.  The Boulder trip probably helped a lot.  More on this later.
• The total hours haven't gone up very much as I went from Age Grouper in '05 to rookie elite in '06 to mid-level elite in '08.
• 800 hours in 366 days averages out to a touch over 2hrs 11min each day.  By comparison, 700 hours in 365 days in 2005 meant 1hr 55min each day.
• Weekly volume: Swim - 4:03, Bike - 6:56, Run - 3:19, Other - 0:59, Total - 15:18.  So that's a really rough ballpark figure for "what it takes" to be an almost-competitive pro triathlete.

Now let's look month-by-month:

Observations:

• My best run split of the year was probably my 1:18:30 at Lake Stevens in early July.  Note that it came after two of my lowest-volume running months.  Odd.  (I'd hurt my IT band in late May.)
• Most of November was my "off-season" 3-week break.
• July was freakin' huge b/c I got to Boulder on the 22nd.  I trained for 46.5 hours during my first ten days in Boulder.
• My September volume was pretty low b/c I raced at Pac Grove and Portland, plus Tinley's in early October.

Okay, that seems like enough number crunching.  I'll try to make my next post a bit less geeky.

A Long Swim

This morning I did my longest swim workout ever!  It kind of caught me by surprise despite having been on my schedule which I received three weeks ago.  Take a glance at this and it doesn't sound super-long, right?

Warm-Up: 400 swim, 300 kick, 200 pull, 100 swim
Main Set: 4x(500 swim, 2x250 pull, 5x100 swim, 10x50 hypoxic, 20x25 underwater for 12.5 then free)

But add it up and its a 1k warm-up followed by 4x5x500 broken, for 11000 yards in total.

The most similar workout that I can remember doing in the past was at Carnegie Mellon's winter training camp in Fort Lauderdale back on 31 Dec 1999.  Coach Belowich told us to do 100 100s broken up any way we wanted and then we'd be free for the day (i.e. no afternoon workout on New Year's Eve). 

After about 7000 yards I really don't have much left in the ol' tank.  I tried not to push the pace for the first half of the workout but I was still dragging by the end, holding about 1:15 for each 100 while at a "moderate" perceived effort.

I'll try to whip up a "2008 training summary" post in the next few days.  Happy New Year, everybody!!

When driving isn't safe...

We've gotten close to a foot of snow over the last week in Seattle and very few roads have been plowed.  So when I needed to pick up a few things at the office today, I took the only logical approach:

I took this in the reflection of the door at my building -- as a sort of proof that I made it there. 

I've never done much cross-country skiing so it was quite an adventure.  I found that some of the medium-traffic roads had a great packed-down surface for skiing -- Old Redmond Rd was fantastic, for examples.  148th Ave would have been pretty good, too, but there were too many cars.  The snow on residential roads was often a bit too deep, especially with the little crust that formed on top of the snow overnight.  The 520 trail was good in places where the crust was already broken up...  and the 148th Ave sidewalk was great after the plow came through and piled up some loose, wet snow on the sidewalk.

Here is what 148th Ave (a pretty major thoroughfare) looked like on Friday morning on the way to work.  It was basically the same today -- they only plowed south of 46th St.

The best thing that I saw today was this 6-foot high igloo in somebody's front yard:

I hope that I gave a few drivers a story to tell when they saw me heading the down the road on skis!

Happy we'll be living under the sea

Today I had the joy of swimming laps with a snorkel for the first time in a very long time.  Or maybe ever.  I seem to remember attempting the "thar she blows" maneuver after a flipturn many years ago ...

What I didn't remember was how freakin' hard it is to swim the crawl stroke with a snorkel.  First I found that my general approach to keeping water out of my nose -- maintaining consistent outward pressure from my lungs -- doesn't work when my open mouth + snorkel is an escape hatch.  Next I found that once you manage to get just a bit of water into the snorkel, every subsequent breath must travel through that puddle of water and make an awful gurgling/choking sound.  Finally I realized that the super-fancy "freestyle optimized" snorkel gives you exactly two head positions to choose from:

• * a neutral head position which I had a tough time maintaining while also freaking out about keeping water out of my nose and out of the snorkel
• * a less neutral head position that puts the tip of the snorkel underwater. Oops.

I quickly gave up on trying to do flipturns as I never seemed to have enough air or coordination to clear the snorkel.  So instead I would do an open turn while keeping my face submerged.  I managed to swim one continuous 300 in a set of 6.  It's a start.

2009 Has Begun

After three weeks of trying to not think too much about the sport I got to start my serious training for 2009 this past Wednesday.  I'm easing into things a bit, but Dave and I still had a fabulous time cranking out the yardage on Wednesday morning.

I'll be doing a lot of focused intensity on the bike while dropping my run volume a bit in order to recover better from the hard two-wheeled efforts.  My biggest goal for this off-season is to make a big step forward in my biking.  My swim and run are reasonably competitive for non-drafting races (just look at the Lake Stevens 70.3 splits, for example) but I am losing a lot of time on the bike.

I still plan to do a few ITU races in 2009 but I think I'll swap out a few of the ones that I did in '08 for extra 70.3 races.

The three-week offseason was a nice head-clearer.  I probably worked out 5 or 6 days each week but did only one or two doubles and didn't stress at all about what I did.  I got to reconnect with some old friends at my 10-year high school reunion over Thanksgiving weekend ... and also got reacquainted with my old friend Beer.

Right Said Fred

I recently had the opportunity to model the Brooks Running Fall 2009 line at their annual sales meeting.  It was the same basic idea as what I did with Northwave last year but with one big difference: rather than just having us stand in front of the room Brooks built a runway and had the models strut their stuff.  Lights!  Music!  Gratuitous Zoolander references!!

Needless to say, I had a lot of fun out there.  I am going to have to update my business cards to say "Software Guy / Triathlete / Model."

The Fall 2009 line from Brooks looks really hot.  They have some great new features in the clothing that really demonstrate their thought leadership on running.

Tri-Cal TV: SF Tri

I see that Tri-California has posted the video from Saturday's race.  I'm only in there fleetingly but it's still fun to watch how the race played out. Next year I'll have to get into that lead swim group so that I can get some "TV time."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n2C8qnr28Q

San Francisco

Here is a rather detailed report on Saturday's race.  I had plenty of time at the airport and on the airplane so you, the reader, get a nice verbose write-up.  I hope to right up a second post tonight that talks about the rest of the trip.

This past weekend I raced in the San Francisco Triathlon at Treasure Island, which is the final race in the Tri-California Series and also an ITU Pan American Cup.  I was third in the Tri-California Series heading into this race, behind Victor Plata and Brian Fleischmann and with Jeff Piland very close behind me and Ethan Brown within striking distance if he had a good race.

The swim course consisted of two triangular laps.  I thought that I got out to a pretty good start in the swim and hit the first turn buoy near the front of the race, ahead of a lot of the carnage.  But that backstretch brought a lot of "interaction" with my fellow racers.  I thought that I gave it as well as I took it but I must have moved back a bit b/c at the next turn buoy I could see a pack strung out ahead of us.  I surged and moved up when I could and felt like I stayed in the draft most of the time, but I exited the water in 23rd place -- in a pack with Reto Waeffler, Chris Stehula, Jason Wilson, Adam Truex and Brian Hague.

The "A" swim pack had put about 75 seconds into us but the trailing end of the "B" swim pack was only ten seconds up.  With a good transition and a quick start on the bike we could have caught them.  But that didn't transpire.  Our group didn't work all that well together, with Brian Hague doing the bulk of the work early on and me taking the lead for much of the last two laps.  Reto flatted at the beginning of the second lap and we caught Mark Fretta on the third. 

I could see Jeff Piland in the group ahead of us and knew that I needed to catch him in order to retain third place in the series.  I tried to organize the group a few times but the TI course has so many corners that it is hard to maintain a rotation.  I was happy with the speed that I carried through the corners, especially after getting used to things on the first lap.

I led most of the last lap as everybody wanted to have their running legs but I couldn't afford to lose any more time on Jeff.  I had a rocky bike dismount and my feet were totally numb as I ran into transition.

I grabbed me shoes and left transition just behind Brian Hague.  Jason Wilson and Chris Stehula must have been first out and Fretta really took off.  I stayed near Brian for awhile but then he started gapping me a bit.  I threw in a few surges to try and claw my way back and eventually caught him on the second lap.  I should note that the run course is three laps on an out-and-back course.

At the turnaround on the first lap I could see that Jeff was hurting and that I *should* be able to catch him if I ran strong the rest of the way.  I steadily closed the gap and passed him after the turnaround on the second lap.  On the third lap I started to see John Dahlz up the road and tried to count guys and see if I could snag some ITU points.  I needed to catch Dahlz & Jason Wilson and to beat Brian ... but then Ethan Brown caught us.  I tried to go with Ethan for a little while in order to get away from Brian but it didn't quite work.  So Ethan got away and Brian caught me again.  I tucked in behind Brian but lost him before the turnaround. 

On the way back, I saw Brian catch Dahlz and clawed my up to them. They slowed down in order to save up for the final sprint so I decided to try and get away right then -- similar to Lake Stevens where I really didn't want to have to sprint to the line.  But Dahlz worked to catch me again w Brian sitting on.  I made 3 more moves and Brian made one before the final 600, when I went for broke.  At about 300 or 400 to go the other guys came past me and I couldn't keep up.  Oh well.  It was a hard fought race and I definitely made some steps forward in my biking.  I need to figure out why I didn't swim a bit better.  I felt pretty good out there but just missed the move, I suppose.

So I took 23rd of maybe 33 guys who started.  No ITU points as they stop at 20th and I was 26 seconds away from the 5% time cutoff.  Close, again!

Swim: 20:02 (23rd, first was Fleischmann in 18:36)
Bike: 1:01:51 (21st, first was Matty Reed in 1:00:11)
Run: 37:15 (21st, first was Mark Fretta in 33:04)
Total: 2:00:32 (23rd, first was Victor Plata in 1:54:30)

Living Vicariously

I haven't raced or posted in awhile, so I've been checking up on what some of my racing friends are up to.  A few guys I know raced in the Huatulco World Cup yesterday.  Jarrod Shoemaker had a good race and took second but the rest of the Americans had a bit of a tough day. The weather was apparently pretty harsh -- 33 C and 98% humidity.  Ouch.

Fleischmann was in a break for like 6 laps of an 8-lap bike and was probably a bit beat on the run.  Ethan's been running really well lately but didn't nail it in Mexico.  The Charb's been on fire all year but also ended up in that 10th to 15th range yesterday.  Kevin was there, too, but it looks like he got dropped on the bike. 

So in other news, at least four guys I know are racing IM AZ.  The first two are somewhat predictable but the other two are surprises:

• Marky V's been planning this one for awhile
• Richard Freer from Austin, and originally Australia ... when I first met him he was working at Dell but he got outta there and is now Living the Dream
• I heard on Facebook that John Dahlz is on the start list and plans to give 'er a go, pending a bit on how he feels at San Francisco on the 8th.
• I saw on Brandon Marsh's blog this morning that he's planning on IM AZ, too, after Clearwater.  But now he's got a little tweak in his calf and will have to see how that goes.

Ben Collins has been talking a lot about his Spin Class lately.  That's something that I've wanted to do for awhile.  Perhaps I should look into it.  I think that the crowd he'll get at UW might be a bit more rowdy that what I'd see at an eastside gym, but you never know.

Ben and I also went Halloween shopping yesterday.  He put together a very nice Slutty Sarah Palin while I assembled a sweet Hipster outfit.  There was something very poetic about shopping for hipster clothes at the Value Village on Capitol Hill with lots of "real" hipsters roaming the store.  It was great to have reference points *right there* to teach us what a real hipster looks like... but their presence also made it very hard to find a good pair of ridiculously tight jeans.

In closing, I saw a funny video on James Cotter's blog.  He's a Kiwi who lives in Austin now, so this whole play on the Kiwi accent was rather appropriate.

Ceepo's new "Bat-Bike"

Thanks to Barrett Brandon for sending this my way.  Here is the bike that  US Pro Tri's bike sponsor was showing off at Interbike:

"If Batman rode a bike, this is the bike he would ride."  More at http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/09/interbikes-ba-2.html

Scott Tinley's Adventures

Raced today in beautiful San Luis Obispo, CA.  It rained, but a fun time was had by all.  I took tenth overall with a good swim, good bike and a rather flat run.  I should clarify that the course was quite hilly but my run performance was flat.

I finished a few spots ahead of Jeff Piland and moved into third in the Tri-California Elite Series with one race to go.  Victor Plata and Brian Fleischmann are ahead of us and there is a pretty large gap behind us, especially once you account for the 250 point bonus that Victor, Jeff & I will get for doing all four races.  Treasure Island should be very interesting for the top four.

More to come later.

A Three Hour Tour

Chris: Rather than just drive back from yesterday's race in Portland, Ben Collins and I decided to drive to Tacoma and then sail his 27-foot Catalina "yacht" up to its new home in Ballard.  Unfortunately there hasn't been much wind and the boat only has a 5hp motor.

Ben: See, a boat's speed is a direct function of several things, the length of the boat (larger boats can go faster than smaller boats), plus the amount of power that goes into propelling the boat forward. The problem that Chris is introducing is that an absence of wind has forced us to rely on a one cylinder 35 year old diesel engine that I was unable to start until about a week ago. Well, it starts now, but about a half an hour ago smoke started spewing from the cabin of the boat, and Chris started acting a little loony.

Chris: and that's why we're stranded here watching the lights come on in downtown Seattle.  But let me go back to how we've been underway for seven hours and have only made it to the middle of Elliott Bay.  You see, when we have run the motor today (sadly, most of the time) we were only running it at about half power.  Ben was concerned about gas mileage and we were a bit short on gas.  But even after stopping to refuel at Des Moines, we were still puttering along at maybe 3 or 4 knots.  I made the joke that one of us should get out at Des Moines and walk and we could see who gets to Ballard first.  Sadly it now appears that would have been an easy victory for the walker.

Ben: I was just explaining to Chris that he should never give up an opportunity for a good story. This, however, is not why we both neglected to charge our cell phones last night, or why I left my GPS in the car, or why around 5pm we decided to say "screw it" and kick this bad boy into gear. No, sadly enough, we set out on our adventure that we would get my new (very used) sailboat from Tacoma to Seattle in under six hours and with as little effort as possible (aside from a few tacks and some sailor lingo). At this point, I'm just thankful it hasn't been raining yet.

Chris: the weather has been so nice today that I'm shocked at how few other boats we've seen out here.  We saw maybe ten boats on our way up and now we just see each ferry as it almost runs us over.   I suppose that's what happens when you're adrift in the middle of the ferry lane.

Ben: no seriously though, the last ferry to com by was REALLY close. As in museum voice distance. Wait, Seattle Traffic is calling me on the radio (our cells are dead, did I mention that?).... brb... ok, the vessel assist is on its way, and now Chris and I are taking turns doing a periodic signal toward the boat, and typing in the blog. OK, my turn.

Chris: neither of has ever gotten Vessel Assist before.  We were wondering whether the Chucklehead Factor of needing Vessel Assist is greater than the comparable factor for roadside assistance.  Vessel Assist is rapidly approaching now.  Gotta go.

Post scriptum ... a few pictures:

 
Ben blogging while we wait for Vessel Assist. It was a lot darker out than it looks in this picture.

 
a blurry shot of the Seattle skyline at dusk ... the boat was a-rockin' from some ferry wake

 
This ferry got a lot closer to us, but my cell phone battery died before then

 
Alki Point at 7 knots

Race Report: Pacific Grove

Last weekend I raced in the Triathlon at Pacific Grove.  I was feeling really good about my swim & run fitness coming in and I expected/hoped to make the main swim group, then break out a new run PR.  As it played out, I didn't swim quite as well as I hoped but my run was pretty solid.

I settled in to fifth place in the swim pack until about 600m when I got tangled up in the kelp.  A kelp rope went up around my neck and I had to stop for two strokes to pull the kelp off.  I lost two spots and then went into a bit of a sprint to try to re-establish my position.  I hit the run-out in seventh and re-entered the water right next to Steve Sexton.  My second lap was a bit of a disaster...  I suddenly felt a bit overcooked and started losing ground.  I kept swimming over kelp while the other guys were in clean water and I lost four more spots.  By the backstretch I was dangling off the back.  I hit a bit more kelp and was on my own.  The lesson in all of this: when you are swimming in a kelp forest, stay behind somebody!!

I had a solid T1 and saw a few other guys grabbing their bikes, so I knew that with a strong first mile I should be able to get into a good bike group.  Of course everybody up ahead of me was sprinting to catch the fastest possible group, too, and I didn't make much headway.  Reto Waeffler caught me from behind and the two of us caught Ethan Brown and Dave Kuendig.  We couldn't bridge to the next man up the road, Kevin Everett, before he caught on to the "B" pack.  So we were a "C" pack of 4 behind "A" and "B" packs of 6.  We worked well together at times but I had to skip a few pulls and that hurt us.  Dave dropped and that hurt us, too.  We ended up losing 4 minutes to the "B" pack and 5 to the "A" pack.

Reto and Ethan picked up a few seconds on me in T2 and went out on the run together.  I tried to pass Reto "authoritatively" around mile one but he knew the trick and picked up his pace, too.  He stayed right there until mile two and then passed me back.  Of course by then I knew that he'd try to surge past me so I was prepared to keep it close.  I re-passed him at mile 2.5 and was finally able to get a bit of a gap.  I kept pushing it the rest of the way, mostly out of pride and the desire to get a new PR run split... I was also motivated a bit by seeing Haven Barnes and Scott Young trying to chase us down from the "D" cycling pack. 

check out my hot new top with a USProTri.com logo!

All in all... I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't hang with the pack more effectively in the swim, but I was happy with my effort and time on the run.  Victor pulled away from me in the Tri-Cal series by winning the race and Jeff Piland pulled ahead of me with his 8th-place finish.  Brians Fleischmann and Lavelle also picked up some healthy piles of Tri-Cal points with their swim & bike primes and respectable finishes.

Overall: 13th place, 1:59:36
Swim: 12th, 19:13
T1: 4th, 1:02
Bike: 15th, 1:04:41
T2: 14th, 0:32
Run: 13th, 34:05

Lance coming back?!?

I know I'm overdue on a few race reports but I've been following this for the last few days and it sounds a bit more official now.  I'm certainly interested in seeing whether he can still be The Man after a few years away & a few years older...  will certainly make next year's tour a bit more popular in the states.

http://www.velonews.com/article/82965/lance-armstrong-returns-to-professional-racing

For those who don't like clicking links -- Lance Armstrong says he's going to race the tour for Astana next year.  Wow...  that will be a killer squad if everyone else sticks around...

Race Report: Austin Triathlon

(Note: I am back-dating this post so that it ends up near the actual race date in the sort order.  Let me know if that is a blogging faux pas.)

I had a business trip to Texas at the end of August so I decided to spend the long weekend visiting friends in Austin.  It also just so happened that the Austin Triathlon was taking place, so I went ahead and signed up.  The Austin Tri is a second-year Olympic Distance race whose course is very similar to the Capital of Texas Tri, which kicks off the summer on Memorial Day Weekend.

Rumors swirled all weekend about who might be racing...  Richie Cunningham... Mike Lovato... Simon Lessing... none of them raced but it was still a pretty strong field for a non-pro race, including James Cotter, newcomer David Kahn, Brandon Marsh and me.

My biggest goal for this race was to really fight on the swim.  Do everything I can to come out with Marsh & Kahn.  Although this race's bike leg didn't allow drafting, I wanted to practice the tactics & intensity of needing to hang with the leaders. 

At the start my plan was to position myself next to Brandon & James.  I knew that James had been staying on Brandon's feet whenever they'd races each other in '08, so I figured that would give me two chances to stay in the lead group.  We jumped in and I swam over to the start buoy which marked the shortest path.  Of course those jokers were nowhere near it, off on the other side of the start line.  This is a good tactic for faster swimmers -- "hide" from the guys who might try to follow your feet -- although I can't really be sure that they were consciously trying to avoid me. 

So with the race set to start any second, I didn't think it was worth trying to swim along the start line looking for them.  I waited for the gun and then just tried to stay ahead of the swimmers around me and make sure that I didn't let anybody from the other side get away.  This actually worked quite nicely as only one swimmer from my end of the start line was able to stay near me and I had pretty clean water to swim in.  As things stretched out I merged in with the other leaders and we turned into a 4-pack.

Things felt pretty comfortable for the next 400m.  Marsh and Kahn swam side-by-side giving Cotter and me a lot of wake to draft in.  I just tried to keep my strong long and relaxed.  As we hit the turn buoy (maybe 600m in??) Brandon got on the front and started stringing things out.  Kahn got on his feet, I got on Kahn's and Cotter got on mine.  Cotter and I both started losing the feet ahead of us around 1k... I lost about 20 seconds to Marsh & Kahn and Cotter lost maybe 5 or 6 seconds to me.  I felt like I popped a bit those last 500m... probably something to be learned there.

T1... a pretty long run... I could hear the announcer talking about Marsh and Kahn just ahead...  James Cotter just about caught me as we were running out with our bikes

Bike leg... I tried to keep Cotter close but I screwed up on the long downhill stretch of South Congress.  I somehow got myself on the wrong side of a line of cones and had to brake a lot in order to get back on course.  Stupid mistake... cost me at least 5-10 seconds right there, plus I lost that visual/mental "contact" with the bike in front of me -- something that can be very useful even if you are too far away for any physical draft.

Eventually Cotter caught up to Marsh & Kahn and the three of them started the run together.  I was probably 3-4 minutes back and the next racers were about 2 minutes behind me.  I tried to push my pace a bit so that I could catch any of the lead guys if they blew up...  but that didn't happen so I just ran in No Man's Land the whole way and finished a very unambiguous fourth place overall.  I was still in the money and I felt pretty good about my swim effort... and I got to spend the day in Austin!  So overall, I can't complain!

Official results / my splits:
Swim: 17:43. 3rd. Fastest was Marsh at 17:19.
T1: 1:57. 5th. Fastest was Kahn at 1:50.
Bike: 1:01:30. 9th. Fastest was Cotter at 58:37.
T2: 0:57.2. 2nd. Fastest was Marsh at 0:56.9.
Run: 36:22. 5th. Fastest was Cotter at 33:31.
Total: 1:58:30. 4th.