High Cost of Triathlon

Before I talk about Triathlon, look at this:

It costs $229. Do you know what it is? It's a fishing pole! The reel is not even included! I don't even know if that's the most expensive one; I randomly picked a price tag to look at.

Saturday I went to Bass Pro in Springfield with my father-in-law. It's a great store and I covet everything in there. I barely know how to fish with a bobber, let alone fly fish, but I want a fly fishing pole!

As a non-fisherman, I find $229 for a fishing pole that is not made out of gold a bit excessive. However, later that day, we went to a bike shop. I again randomly turned over a price tag and it read $1500! And the pedals weren't included!

You should know, I find $1500 for a bike quite expensive, but I wasn't surprised. I've priced bikes before, and $1500 is on the lower end. You can spend whatever you want on a bike. And then there's pedals, shoes, and helmets. My father-in-law said he saw a helmet for $260.

Do you need an expensive pole to catch a trout? I doubt it. I saw my friend Chris once catch a very nice bass with a little Mickey Mouse rod and reel. Do you need an expensive bike to finish a triathlon? I hope not. I ride a Lotus that I bought in 1991 or 1992 for $250.00. I'll let you know how it goes.

Ouch! That Hurts!

Morning workouts aren't my cup of coffee. First thing in the morning is my least favorite time to do a workout. I prefer to workout about mid-morning, after I've had coffee and my breakfast has a chance to sit for a while. Unfortunately most mid-mornings I'm at work or church. That leaves one mid-morning to do it my way.

Swimming is a problem when it comes to my schedule. The only time the pool is open for lap swimming is first thing in the morning. They open at 5AM. So if I'm going to swim before work, I have to get over there by 5:45AM. [Excuse Alert!] Because it's so hard for me to get over to the pool is why my swimming is so weak.

Now I have another reason to not like working out first thing in the morning. At about 5:30AM the other day, I lifted the curl bar and it felt like someone stabbed me in the back. I promptly blamed it on the time of day. It probably had more to do with not warming up, at all, but come on! Curling should be done when the sun is up.

You really do need to schedule your workouts. You'll find...Hey, why are the Beastie Boys playing in my son's bedroom? OK, just got back. He found it on the radio, No Sleep Til Brooklyn. It's funny what he gravitates towards, and he didn't get it from me. I don't mind the Beastie Boys (though I'm certain they're not appropriate for 10 year old boys) but a couple of years ago when he won the spelling bee, for his reward he picked the Metallica Guitar Hero game. I like a few of those popular Metallica songs, you know, the ones where they sold out, but he prefers that pre-Black Album stuff. The other game out that year was the AC/DC Rock Band game. I guess if he's going to listen to one of those bands, I'd prefer Metallica. Their lyrics seem so esoteric that I don't even know what they're talking about. AC/DC, not so much.

Hey, where was I? Oh, yes. Schedule your workouts. Find the time that is best for you. If it's first thing in the morning, thoroughly warm up first. Keep in mind, however, your workout is probably not the most important part of your life, so schedule accordingly.

iPhone Lust

i do lust after the iPhone. i hope to get one some day.

But you're a PC man! What the heck?

i blogged earlier this week about recording your workouts. i made a form on Excel, which i print and take to the garage with me when i exercise. There i simply write my numbers onto my form.

That's all well and good, but i realize that it would much more efficient if i could record my numbers electronically directly into whatever software i am using. Right now i transfer my numbers into my log on beginnertriathlete.com. It's a manual process, and it's a little tedious. It's free, so i'm not going to complain about it, but the reporting is a little limited. There is a subscription service you can buy, which i assume would come with more reporting features.

However, i've been reading about some of the fitness apps on the iPhone. A couple of them seem pretty cool. They even let you record your food intake so that you can calculate your calorie usage. i would like to monitor my calories, but i refuse to carry a notebook and pen around, writing down everything i eat just to turn around and transfer it into some program. These apps would let me record my workouts and calories on the fly, and would make it immediately available for reports. Sweet.

The ease of recording your runs is what's nice about my Garmin Forerunner 305. i strap it to my wrist, go for a run, and when i get back i sync it up with 305 software on my PC. It records speed, heart rate, pace, distance, etc. Again, i'll review it more fully at some point, but overall i'm very pleased with it.

And if i ever get one of those iPhones, i'll review one of those fitness apps as well.

Run with Dogs, You're Going to Make Friends

Though the title may suggest it, I don't own dogs. Indeed, I do not own even one animal, unless you're a naturalist, then I have four animals that I live with, one of which I call my wife, but it's kind of gross to think of it that way.

When I run through the neighborhood, every once in a while a dog of some sort will find me and decide to run with me. These aren't always stray dogs, either. Some I'm sure belong to someone because they sport a collar.

Now, just because I don't have a dog doesn't mean I don't like dogs. Fact is, I do like dogs and I always try to make friends with the ones I encounter, unless it's during a run and I can help it. When a dog starts running with me, I actually try to discourage any kind of friendship the dog wants to foster with me. I'll give verbal commands like, "Get!" and "Go home!" These dogs rarely speak English, so they keep running with me. I've had them follow me for a mile or two before.

Once a little tiny fluffy white lap dog started following me. He was surprisingly fast for such a little dog. I'd planned on doing a loop that day, but I got to feeling guilty about leading him so far from home, so I decided to make it an out an back, and turned around to lead it back through his own neighborhood. On the way back it got distracted and peeled off. I can only assume he found his way home.

That's what happens a lot of times when dogs are loose. Generally the dogs are penned up in their yard, and they decide to bark at me as I go by. I'll interpret their barks:

"Hey, don't come in our yard. Don't you dare. Yeah, that's right, you keep right on running, punk!"

Occasionally these dogs will be loose and they'll come out on the street to challenge me. Here I'll call their bluff and try to make friends. Sometimes I'm able to and they'll let me pet them. The less friendly ones will back off and not let me get close. I've never been worried about getting bit.

I'm more worried about looking stupid. I hate it when a dog comes out of nowhere and surprises me with a bark. I'll be going along listening to some podcast or other, when all of a sudden, "Woof, woof, woof!" I do my best not to jump, but I have rapidly changed course. I'm sure the dog owners take great delight in seeing a jogger jump out his Asics.

One more thing about four legged running partners. People always assume the dog is yours. I run on the left side of the road, approaching traffic. The dog runs out in the middle of the street. Any time a car comes by I feel like I have to tell the driver, "Hey, it's not mine." There's really no good way to say that while you're running. Do I shake my head and shrug? I'm sure that gets interpretted as, "I don't know why my stupid dog runs out in the middle of the road." That's not what I want to say. Thankfully I haven't seen any of these dogs get hit. Talk about feeling guilty.

Consistency-I Always do That

Think of activities you perform every day. Activities like, eating, sleeping, drinking, peeing. If you stopped doing even one those there would be terrible consequences, up to and including a hospitaliztion with a breathing tube, IV, and catheter. That's not what you want, is it?

In my previous posts over the last couple of days I talked about the importance of recording your workouts. Today I'm talking about the importance of recording those workouts consistently.

If you're recording your workouts, it's very easy to look back and see how consistent you are, or how consistent you are not. If you're not making the gains you expect, perhaps you need to workout more often.

Philosophers argue over whether or not we always do what we most want to do. You say you want to run a sub 7 minute mile, but you never get off the couch and run. I think it's apparent that you really don't want to run a sub 7 minute mile. Your actions prove it.

Being consistent not only means logging enough workouts, but recording consistent gains. You record a run three times every week, but your mile is at 10 minutes every time. Perhaps you need to exert yourself to find those gains, even if it's just one second each run. If you run slow on a regular basis, you'll get really good at running slow.

Keep in mind, it is possible to record too many workouts. Virtually everyone recommends rest. You have to give your body time to recover. You don't bench every single day. By logging your workouts, you can look back and find patterns. You may find that you make your biggest gains with four days of rest between bench days instead of three days. You might run better week to week by running four times per week instead of just three.

So consitently working out and consistently logging it work together. It may even pay off. I've been recording my workouts for awhile, but I recently learned that my health insurance plan pays out rewards for exercising. I go to their website, log in, and record my activity. They assign a certain amount of points to each activity, and after accumulating so many points, I can receive a gift card to any number of businesses, including a cash debit card. So far this year I've earned $50, which I put towards some cycling shoes on Amazon.com.

(You can see the above image, and others like it, here.)

Time out: Bob Knight just cussed on ESPN. Is he allowed to do that?

How Hard Should I Try? Let me See the Spreadsheet

Yesterday I talked about a relatively easy way to record your workout. Paper, pencil, and that's it. I said I use Excel to create a form which I print, and fill in by hand. Here's a piece of it:

Why is it important to look up and see what you did at your last workout? There may be several reasons, but an important one is to know how much effort you need to put into this workout. You give maximum effort every single time and you don't need a number to tell you what to do? Good for you. For the rest of us it helps to have a record.

Here's what I mean. You're on your way to benching 200 pounds. At your last workout you did four sets lifting 115 five times and one set of only lifting it 4 times. Your intermediate goal is to do 5 sets of 5 reps at 115 pounds before moving up to 120 pounds. You begin your workout, and you're not feeling it. The reps are coming harder than you expected. But you know that you almost got over the 115 pound threshold last time, so you buckle down and try that much harder, and before you know it you got your 25 total reps at 115 pounds. That's how gains are made, by exerting yourself.

This concept applies to several disciplines. I find that it's very easy during a run to believe I'm running faster than ever, but my actual time says I had lead feet. I heard Michael Jordan say once while he was still playing that each day he wanted to get a little bit better. If that's your goal, you're going to need to know what "better" is. In other words, you need an intermediate goal that is slightly heavier, faster, etc., than your last goal, and knowing what the goal is helps you get there.

If you don't use past performance and intermediate goals to motivate yourself, what do you use?

Gettin Nerdy with It-Record Your Workouts

Do you use an Excel spreadsheet to workout? No? You need to check your formula because it's a good idea.

If the point of your workouts is to make gains, like getting faster or stronger, you're going to need some way to measure your progress. Unless you've got the memory of Rain Man, it'll be very difficult to remember from workout to workout exactly what you did last time, and what you need to do this time to improve.

Let's look at a very simple example. You want to bench 200 pounds, and currently you bench 100 pounds. The ultimate goal is 200 pounds, but you'll need several intermediate goals to get there. You start off with an intermediate goal of lifting 110 pounds 5 times. The first time you put it up 3 times. The next time you put it up 4 times, but then you stall, and the next time you only lift it 4 times again. The next time you workout you remember that you're still at 110 pounds, but you can't remember how many reps you did. You can see that over several iterations of this it'll be difficult to remember what you need to add to stay on track, especially when you add in additional sets and exercises, like with a real workout.

So where does Excel come in? I find that it's easiest to record the workout as I'm doing it. When I get up from the bench, I immediately write down the reps and the weight. I write it down on a page I print from Excel that has my workout laid out, including the exercise, reps, and weight. Here it is:

I find it easier to print this and fill it in with a pen or pencil in the garage as I'm working out. At the next workout, I can easily see what I did last time, and try to improve on it. I suppose if you have a laptop or some other portable computing device you can take that with you and record your workouts directly into the software. I understand there are several iPhone apps created to record workouts in a similar fashion.

Is it absolutely necessary to use an Excel spreadsheet for this? No, but I'm used to using Excel so it was natural for me to create a log like this. You can draw one up by hand it you need to, just so it's something that is clear to you. If you already  record your workouts, how do you do it?

I'll talk more later about how recording your workouts like this can help you make gains.