A Lengthy Update

It's been a while since I last updated my blog but I wanted have something more positive to write about than what I left you with after my last post. This was becoming a super long post so I split it up into two separate ones the second of which I'll post in a couple days I promise. Since it's been so long I don't even really know where to begin. First a quick recap. So as you recall the day after the 8 km race in April, I sustained a very bad injury to my left leg. I was unable to run or even walk without severely limping due to pain around my knee, radiating down into my lower leg and foot. If I had tried running it would be tolerable for a few seconds before feeling like a pressure was building in my lower leg, until feeling like it was going to explode. If I tried to walk slightly faster, the pain would be so gross my whole leg would give out from underneath me. I was convinced it was compartment syndrome, however this injury was the strangest injury that I've ever sustained in that the pain was never consistent. Some days it would feel as though it was my knee that was the problem, and other days it would feel as though it was my lower leg that was the problem in the anterior compartment of shin. Sometimes it would feel similar to a stress fracture at the medial part of my leg. And other times it would feel as though it was a hip problem. I had seen a therapist here at McMaster, who thought it was a problem in one of my hip muscles as well that was impinging on the nerve specifically the femoral nerve that was causing the pain to radiate Down into my knee and into my lower leg as well. He worked on my hip, and I kept up my homework that he had given me to work out some tightness in my glute minimus specifically, and the posterior side of the vastus lateralis (one of the quad muscles) near my ITB band. The homework consisted of a lot of painful active release techniques, and balance exercises to improve the strength of my hip muscles. I also did a lot of work simply stepping forwards onto the left foot and bringing my hips forwards as I did so, while keeping my abs tight, and my pelvis in a slight posterior tilt. Essentially, for a solid 2 months my core/strength workouts essentially had been aimed at re-inventing how I move. I've always known that I run with quite a severe amount of lordosis in my lumbar spine couple with an anteriorly rotated pelvis. Overtime this has given me a plethora of frontal hip problems and lower back problems. Specifically my hip flexors, since they have been needing to work so hard from an anatomically disadvantaged and lengthened position. Within the first couple weeks I saw my knee pain disappear, however the pain in my lower leg persisted. Like I said before this was the strangest injury I've ever had, and the most debilitating in terms of gross pain. I can't remember how many times I said to people yes it's compartment syndrome, to then less then a week later saying yes it's 100% a deep stress fracture in the tibia, to no it's a stress fracture of the fibula, to it feels like a high degree ankle sprain.

Throughout this time, I had been putting in monster weeks on the bike and in the pool. I had been averaging anywhere from 25-35km in the pool, and 450-550km on the bike per week. As I mentioned before in my last post, I have been following an intense program provided by TrainerRoad for the indoor trainer, and was in the midst of the build phase of the program (there are three phases: base, build, speciality). Whereas the base phase consisted of many sweet spot workouts or workouts about 10-20% below my threshold, with a focus of increasing the amount of time I could tolerate at a sub-threshold power, the build phase, in my opinion, was much more demanding in that it consisted of weekly VO2 max workouts, and bi-weekly over-under workouts, and well as a bi-weekly long ride. The VO2 max workouts consist of 6-10 shorter intervals in the 3-4 minute range at 120-125% FTP with the aim of increasing my aerobic and anaerobic power. The intervals are setup in a way such that you are supposed to be barely able to finish each interval. Overtime, I could start to see the improvements and felt my VO2 max was beginning to respond. For example, one workout which was 10x3minutes at 115% FTP saw my Heart Rate climb up to 196-197 which was the highest heart rate, other than my VO2 max test in my undergrad, that I ever achieved on a bike. Subsequently, two weeks later I did 9x4 minutes but this time at 120% FTP, and my heart rate didn't get above mid 170s indicating that my VO2 max had likely increased. What I found even more demanding than the VO2 max workouts, were the over-under intervals. These consist of longer intervals in the 10-12 minute range where you go from 95% FTP to 105%, and back to 95, then back to 105 and so fourth. This means that as you increase to a %FTP where your muscles begin to flood with a combo of fatigue and lactate, you stay there for a bit, and then the "recovery" though is still at a very high intensity of 95%, so essentially you are forced to try to work through the mounting fatigue and burning in your legs while still pedalling and working at a very high intensity. Essentially, these intervals work to increase your ability to better buffer lactate, increasing not only how long you can work above your FTP but also increasing your FTP itself. I just realized that I've been throwing around the term FTP a whole lot in this last paragraph, and for those of you who do not know what FTP stands for, it means you're functional threshold power which is representation of the maximum power you can sustain for one hour.

The results were incredible. I felt so good on the bike, I built up the confidence to enter into my first ever bike race, which was the Grey County Time Trial in Blue Mountains on May 27 at 7pm. So many new things to take in at this race. My first bike race, my first time trial in any sport, my first time facing professional cyclists in a UCI World Championship Qualifier. A time trial, in case you don't know, is what they call the race of truth. You may have seen it on tv in the tour de france for example where the cyclists have on the skin suits, aero (pointy back) helmet, big disc wheel on the back of the bike, and riding solo at very high speeds on a closed course. Basically, riders go off in one minute intervals, so it is an entirely a solo effort against the clock, and then against competitors to see who had the best time. Now normally, since speed is the name of the game in a time trial they are normally done on flat fast route. Stupidly this was done in Blue Mountain, with categorized climbs, one stretch on a gravelly road, and many turns. Not exactly built for speed, which was frustrating not only to me, who was going to test and push my limits on the bike, but to the professionals who flocked here for the UCI World qualifier. This course was be no means a proper time trial course, it was a road race course which they slapped the name time trial onto. Still it was pretty cool to start on a start ramp to be unleashed onto the course. This one would definitely be challenging for me, considered the gearing on my bike (with an 11-23 cassette) was not build for the hills, and also I was one of two of the only competitors who didn't have a disc or aero carbon wheels on their bike. I had heavy alloy rims on my bike, since the new wheels which I purchased had not yet been delivered, which would again hurt me on the climbs and on the flats. But I tried to keep my mindset such that it was a race against the clock, and an opportunity to push myself into a new realm of pain on the bike. The course was 33.5km long and in such a short amount of time had 1400 ft of elevation gain. Within 1 minute and 8 seconds may heart rate was at 180 bpm. I forgot to mention, unfortunately the week leading into the race my power meter on my bike which itself is worth 3000$ stopped working out of the blue. I have relied on power data throughout my training with TrainerRoad, and was intending on holding a specific power plan for the race course, which was critical to my pacing strategy. Since many readers following along may be runners and not cyclists, to put it into more relatable terms, think about it as though going into a marathon you have trained for 16 weeks and intended on sticking to 5 min/km to run a 3:30 marathon and then in the week before the race, your watch stops working and you need to race without it. So I had no data to go by except for heart rate to judge my effort, which can be incredibly unreliable since so many factors affect it. Anyways back to the time trial, so after the first couple turns, by 4 minutes when the road straightened out and turned into the wind, my heart rate was up at 186 and was travelling 44-50 km/hr. On the category 3 climb, according to Strava which can make a rough estimation of power output based on speed and the gradient of the climb I averaged approximately 400 Watts (almost 8 w/kg) for 3.5 km and heart rate peaked at 190 bpm. It really is a totally different feeling then running in a race, where here it felt literally like my heart was beating out of my chest and legs were absolutely burning. Anyways to skip a little ahead. I conquered that climb, then pounded it to the finish with a couple more hills to get over before then. On the gradual descent back to the finish I peaked at 80 km/hr which was a big confidence booster for me. I'm not going to lie, fast descents scare the daylights out of me, but to hit this speed on one and not touch the brakes gave me a lot of confidence, confidence which I would need in my next race up, the Milton Triathlon. But before I get to that, to sum up the Time Trial, which in warmup based on the look of my competition who were mostly professional category 1 and 2 cyclists and the fact that everyone had bikes with light carbon wheels and aerodynamic discs, along with 1000$ skin suits for aerodynamics, I thought I was going to come dead last, but actually managed a mid-pack finish, and averaged 39km/hr for 51 minutes on a hilly course with garbage roads. So I was very pleased with my effort, and according to Strava which again gave a rough estimate of my power it said my estimated power averaged was 300W. This would have been a new FTP. The next morning after staying over in Blue Mountain, I biked back to Thornhill. I was initially thinking this was going to be an easy downhill ride back since I had a 4.5 hour ride scheduled at an easy intensity on the trainer road plan. It wasn't. It was crazy hilly especially when in the cliffs in Mono, and climbed almost 4000ft. Not to mention this was on a day with an extreme heat alert with the temperature in the low 40s with the humidex, and o ya to add to things was into a headwind start to finish, with the south winds bringing in the hot air. So I would say it far from a recovery ride, but again I pulled through and sucked it up to finish strong. About 2 hours in I wanted to give up so badly, my heart rate was very high throughout and was breathing very hard start to finish thanks to the heat. Going up one monster climb in Mono which was about a 15 minute long steep climb I was struggling, but I tried to convince myself that I did not have a phone in my back pocket and that this was the only way home. It worked. I was able to re-focus, and grind away the miles.

Now onto Milton. But before I get there, I should mention that biking was not the only thing I was up to. In early May I started swimming with 4 elite triathletes at Mac on a regular basis, all of whom are better swimmers than me. But I figured I would never get better by continuing to swim random workouts on my own at my own pace. Initially, I was needing to go all out just to stay near their feet in the water. For example, we would have sets in the beginning where they would say okay so were going to do 12x50m leaving on 45 (meaning the repetitions start every 45 seconds, so if your finished in 40 then you get 5 second recovery before the next interval, if you finish in 45, then you just keep swimming hoping you can pick up the pace to get some recovery before the next one). They would say 12x50 in 45 just building into the set. I would say sure and instead of going easy would need to go flat out start to finish make the pace time. The problem was that this was a building set into the main set which was supposed to be much harder. Well I was already going flat out. After about a week of flogging myself, I started seeing huge gains, and basically was setting new personal bests every day, and now was able to keep up and do the sets the right way.

So the Milton Triathlon was a sprint distance triathlon, meaning it was a 800 meter long swim and a 30 km bike. This race is part of the Subaru Triathlon Series, which always attract high level competition. Since I was still not running consistently and pain-free at this point I was entered in, into the Swim/Bike Division. Meaning exactly what it sounds like, there is the same swim, same bike, and your finish is at the end of the bike. My wave went approximately 6 minutes after the first wave, and 3 minutes after the seconds. By about 1 minute into the race, there was no one near me in my wave, and a couple minutes later I caught the second wave. I meandered through this wave of swimmers, and after a few more minutes caught up to the first wave of the race. I had a great swim doing the 800 meters in 10 minutes and 40 seconds. Then I ran out of the water, and got it going on Elektra. The race is known for a very long steep climb up the escarpment, and again my bike wasn't really built for this, but I passed countless numbers of riders, and was beginning to dominate the competition (remember the people I was passing had started 6 minutes before me). Eventually I was passing some of the elite cyclists in the sport as the rain began to fall. The roads were starting to get wet, and we still had to go back down that same hill that we previously climbed up. Again I went down it with no fear peaking over 80 km/hr on wet roads, with a hard left hand turn right at the base of the hill (gulp). Got through it, and finished the race incredibly strong. I had won my race by a huge margin, and had the fastest bike split of the day, and very close to the course record. I covered the 30km in 45 minutes for 40 km/hr average speed.

Next up was the Guelph Triathlon, also part of the Subaru Series, where I would be doing the Olympic Distance Swim/Bike on the Saturday (1.5km swim, 40km bike) and then the Sprint Distance Swim/Bike (800m, 20km) as well on the Sunday. Going into the race my swimming was not quite as strong (I was just not feeling as strong in the water in the workout leading up to the race) but still managed to hold a pretty good pace of 22 minutes for 1500m (1:27/100m). I got out of the water in a great position, and got onto my deadly weapon of a bike Elektra, which was now equipped with awesome deep carbon wheels. Once again I dominated the race, and won again by a massive margin. This time I had the third fastest bike split of the day, in a much deeper and more elite field which included a number of professional triathletes. I completed the 40 km in 1 hour 1 minute on a windy day, and rolling course which a couple major climbs. On the way back (it was an out and back course) I averaged anywhere from mid 40s to 65 km/hr. Next day right back to the course, and familiar feelings winning the race once again propelled to victory by my bike split completing the 20 km in 29 minutes flat. This was a pretty tough feeling race to start with on the bike, as about 5 km in I was thinking trying to double on consecutive days was a bike idea as my legs felt a little flat, but battled through and broke the race up into 1 minute segments, focusing on holding a consistent cadence, and not dwelling on the pain mounting in my legs.

Here's a post-race photo with my beast of a bike, and new stunning wheels:

So three consecutive wins, and next up would be my toughest challenge the Rose City Long Course Triathlon in Welland with details in my next post. 

To sum up this post though, one quote comes to mind from the great Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest, "Never give up, never surrender." When everything seems to be going wrong, and there is seemingly no answer, trust in your abilities, and believe that you will overcome whatever obstacles that face you. Hard work pays off, and those times where you think you can't keep going, or need to slow down, believe that your work ethic and your perseverance is what will set you apart from your competition on race day and in life in general. I constantly say to myself in training one of my favourite quotes, "We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." (Aristotle)

Thanks for reading, and until next time, get outside, and enjoy the day pushing your so called limits.