Navin Johnson: The new phone book is here! The new phone
book is here!
Harry Hartounian: Well I wish I could get so excited about
nothing.
Navin Johnson: Nothing? Are you
kidding?! Page 73, Johnson, Navin, R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people
look at the internet every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity,
you’re name in print, that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to
start happening to me now.
Well, it has been over four months since my last post. My initial excitement has worn off, and I
have somewhat settled into a pattern of training. The big news is that I finally completed my
first triathlon last weekend. It was
only an Olympic distance, but I survived (barely).
Despite my initial enthusiasm, I have been slowly easing
into training. Although I had planned to
start swimming in addition to biking and running in January, I decided to wait
on the swimming. I didn’t want to have to swim when it was cold out in the
mornings, and I quickly figured out that I needed to spend a lot more time
building a base in biking. Consequently,
I spent the first three months of the year just running and biking.
My goal was generally to bike 100 miles per week, and to try
and do increasingly longer long rides on the weekends. This seemed to work pretty well, and I was
fairly consistent in January and February.
By the end of February, I was able to ride 60 miles at a time, without
too much problem. I was pretty happy
with myself that within the course of a couple months, I was already up to
riding over half the Ironman distance.
This increase in biking, however, came at the expense of my
running. Before I started biking, I was
averaging over 100 miles per month of running. Once I started biking, my
running mileage fell to under 50 miles per month. Fortunately, my speed and my endurance did
not seem to suffer very much. I ran a 15
km race in March, and my time was within a minute or two of the two times I had
run the same race in the past, when I was running much more consistently. It seemed that my time was better spent
developing the muscles I would need to bike for six plus hours, rather than to
get just a little bit faster at running – especially with so much time left
before my race in November.
When March rolled around, I had a lot more going on with my
kids and their track meets, and I was not as consistent getting my long rides
in on the weekends. My mileage fell off,
and I was not being as consistent as I should have been. I kept rationalizing it to myself that I
still had eight months until my race, and I had plenty of time to ramp up my
training. To be honest, the initial excitement had worn off, and it was getting
to be a bit of a drag.
Finally, in the first week of April, I decided it was time
to start swimming. I joined the YMCA that is within about a half mile of my
house, and decided to give it a try. I
was very hesitant at first. Unlike
biking, which I was able to do on my own without an audience, there is no way
to avoid having other people see you swimming. I had not done any serious
swimming in 25 years, and even then, I had stunk. I remembered that even back
then, I struggled to go 250 meters without hanging on the edge and gasping for
breath.
Fortunately, I set very low goals at first because I didn’t
know what to expect. I figured that
since I was already up to being able to bike half the Ironman distance, I would
set a goal for trying to be able to swim half the Ironman distance within the
first month or two. I figured that when I was training for marathons, I tried
to run a minimum of four times the distance – or at least 100 miles – each month. I decided that would work for a swimming
goal, and that I would try to do four times the half Ironman distance - or a total of about 5 miles – in my first
month.
The first day of swimming was awful. I went down on Monday
morning and decided that I would swallow my pride, and make a fool of myself.
It turned out to be just as bad as I expected. Although my arms and legs were
working like they should, I couldn’t breathe. I had real trouble exhaling
underwater. Every time I turned my head to breathe, I had to both exhale and
inhale. Within a few minutes, I was gasping and totally hyperventilating. My
heart rate shot up in no time. I had to
stop and catch my breath every 50 or 100 yards. After 20 minutes, I had only
gone 700 yards, and I was exhausted.
I went back again the next day, and it was a little bit
easier. I was able to start developing a
bit of a rhythm, and started getting a little more comfortable breathing. My
second day was still ugly, but it was definitely an improvement. Because I was feeling a little more
comfortable, I decided to increase from 20 minutes on Monday to 30 minutes on
Tuesday. I was still stopping nearly
every 100 yards to catch my breath, but it was definitely feeling much easier
than the first day. I made it 30
minutes, and was able to go 1,300 yards, almost double what I had done the day
before.
I went a few more times that week, and was able to get more
and more comfortable each time. I kept
it to a max of 30 minutes that week, but by the end of the week, I could swim
1,400 yards in a half hour without too much problem. By the end of the week, I was doing OK, but I
still had to stop every 100 or 200 yards to catch my breath a little bit. As I
feared, my shoulders and my back got pretty sore during the first few weeks of
swimming. As a runner (and now a little bit of a biker), my lower body was
fairly fit. My upper body, however, was
pathetic. Swimming used a whole bunch of muscles I wasn’t used to dealing with.
It wasn’t terrible, but it reminded me of the soreness in my neck and shoulders
when I started biking. There were a few
nights I had to get out the heating pad to relax my shoulders so I could sleep.
Since I had joined the YMCA, I also started doing some of my
bike rides on the stationary bikes there.
For some reason, I found it easier to ride the stationary bikes when it
was dark outside. I had been doing a
fair amount of my mid-week rides in the dark up to then. It wasn’t terrible, but it was easier to
convince myself to get out of bed in the morning, or get off the couch at night
to ride if I wasn’t doing it alone in the dark.
Although stationary bikes are just as tedious as treadmills, I found I
was doing more miles again once I started riding indoors. I still preferred to be outdoors, especially
for longer rides. Since the gym part of the YMCA opened at 5am, but the pool
did not open until 5:30, it was fairly easy to convince myself to go pedal for
30-45 minutes before I would swim for 30-45 minutes.
One advantage of the stationary bikes was that it was easier
to customize a hill workout. Depending
on how much time I had, and how I felt, I could customize rides to work on
cadence or heart rate, and it was much easier to hold a threshold heart rate on
the stationary bike than on the road.
Anyway, by the end of April my swimming had progressed surprisingly
well. By the end of the month, I was
able to swim 2,500 yards, which was more than half the distance of the Ironman
swim. I was able to swim a mile in one workout without much problem, and
without having to stop and catch my breath except one or twice during the workout.
Although my goal for April and only been five miles, I ended up doing over
11. I cut back on my biking a little in
April, but I was still able to get in over 350 miles for the month. Because I
was doing more threshold rides on the stationary bike, I probably gained more
fitness in April than if I would have just rode 400 miles on the road at
somewhat normal paces.
Several of my friends were doing an Olympic distance
triathlon in Tempe in mid- April. I was
too new to swimming, and knew I was not ready for that. I did go down and watch them, however, and
that sort of rekindled my excitement.
Their paces were not too far off what I was doing in training, and it
got me thinking that I was getting close to being ready to try a tri for real. Although I had been combining swimming and
biking, I had not yet done any real running off the bike. I tried it a few times, and quickly
discovered that it is not at all like running with fresh legs. It took me about
two miles to loosen up and adjust, and to settle into a comfortable running
pace.
Fortunately for me, there was another Olympic distance in
mid-May. I debated whether or not I was
ready for a long time. Finally I talked
myself into it. To make sure I could do
it, I swam 2,500 yards in the pool without stopping on the Thursday before the
race. That went pretty well, and I was able to average under two minutes per
100 yards for the entire 2,500 yards. Up until then, the longest I had ever
gone without a break was 1,500 yards, so I was feeling pretty confident. I was a bit nervous because I had not done
any training in open water, but I convinced myself that since I had spent several
summers when I was a kid swimming in the lake near my home town, and doing lots
of waterskiing, that I would not be freaked out by the open water like lots of
triathletes are.
I went down to register the day before the race. The race
included at least parts of the course for Ironman Arizona, so I was looking
forward to it. I had some goals in mind, but I really did not know what to
expect. I had routinely done longer
segments of swimming, biking and running, but I had never done all three
together in any distance approaching the race distance. Based on my paces in
training, I thought I should be able to finish the swimming in 35 minutes or
so, the bike in about an hour and twenty minutes, and the run in around an
hour. I thought this was a very conservative goal, since I was able to do each
of the legs much faster than those paces in my training.
I showed up Sunday morning feeling pretty good about
myself. I got to the transition area
nice and early, and set up my bike and the rest of my equipment. Since most of my friends had raced in April,
they were not doing this race. I didn’t
recognize anyone in the transition area, and I didn’t know what to do to kill
the next hour until the race started. I
waited for the portajohn and then went back and reorganized my gear again.
After a while, they started announcing that they would be
starting the sprint race in about 20 minutes.
Having nothing better to do, I decided I would go watch those waves
start. When I decided to head down near
the water, I realized that I had no idea when I should put my own wetsuit
on. I had never even swam in a wetsuit
in my life. I knew that they were tight, and hard to get on. I had practiced putting it on a few times on
Saturday night, and figured out that it took a lot of tugging and pulling, and
basically giving yourself a wedgy to get the thing on. Then trying to zip it up
by myself was a real challenge, and I kept getting my tri top stuck in the
zipper.
I stood around in the transition for a while to try and see
whether other people were putting on their wetsuits yet. Some people already had their wetsuits on,
and some people didn’t. I couldn’t tell
if the people with them on were doing the sprint or the Olympic. Finally, I saw a couple older guys who were
about my age, but way more fit than me, carrying their wetsuits down toward the
beach. I decided that they were so fit
that there was no way they were only doing the sprint distance. As a result, I grabbed my wetsuit, cap and
goggles, and headed down toward the beach.
I hung out down by the water for quite a while, watching
other swimmers warm up. I had already
decided I was not getting in the water until shortly before my race. I wanted to save as much energy as possible
to survive the race, and didn’t care too much about swimming fast. As a result, I convinced myself it would be
best not to warm up. After a while, I
was several people who looked like they must be doing the Olympic distance
start putting on their wetsuits. I got
nervous, because of the difficulty I had on Saturday night getting my wetsuit
on, so I decided I better not wait any longer.
Especially since I didn’t have any friends there to help me put it on,
or zip it up, I decided I should get started even though there were still at
least 20 minutes until my wave started. That was stupid of me. I ended up
putting it on way too soon. In hindsight, I should have practiced putting it on
and taking it off more before I showed up to race. Fortunately, I learned that
triathletes are by and large nice people, and there were a couple people who
offered to help me get zipped up. After I was zipped up, three or four people
asked me to help them zip up. Anyway – I
zipped up too soon, and it got pretty hot waiting around for all the waves of
the sprint to go off.
Once I started seeing the sprint waves go off, it started to
sink in that my time was coming soon. I
started to get a little nervous. All of
a sudden, I wasn’t as confident that I was ready for open water. This was going to be my first time ever
swimming in a wetsuit, my first time swimming in open water in over 25 years,
and my first triathlon. The 400 meters
that the sprint athletes were swimming all of a sudden looked pretty far, and
the Olympic distance buoys started to look like they were in the next county. I
tried to convince myself that it was no big deal, and to trust my training, but
I was not totally successful in calming myself down.
Finally, they called my wave. They said you could either get
out in the mob and tread water before the start, or wait on the beach. I
thought about waiting on the beach, but I decided that I better use this
opportunity to get used to the mob. Once I got into the water, however, the
wetsuit started to feel like an anaconda squeezing my chest. Between general nerves, the constricting
feeling of the wetsuit, and treading water, my heart rate was already pretty
high before the race even started.
Now I had read lots of advice online about surviving your
first triathlon, and how much different it was to swim in open water with a
mob. Somehow I had convinced myself that
all of my childhood swimming in lakes was going to insulate me from any
problems. Nothing I had ever done,
however, prepared me for the mob. I had
also neglected to factor in the adrenaline and excitement of the start of the
race. Ever since I was in junior high, I
have always had problems getting carried away at the start of a race, and going
out too fast, and then falling apart at the end. I did it in my first half
marathon, and again in my first marathon. I thought I had learned my lesson
when I went to run my second marathon, and had convinced myself to just stick
with a pace group. Before I knew it, I got carried away with excitement, and
passed the pace group only to crash and burn in the last couple miles.
In any event, when the starter horn went off, it was a
churning mass of pandemonium. This was a relatively small race. I can only imagine how confusing it will be
in the real Ironman race next Fall when there are like five times as many
people. Although I had started about two-thirds of the way toward the back of
my age group wave, it was still terrifying. With every stroke, I was running
into someone, or someone was running into me.
Nothing I had done in training prepared me for this. I tried to just
start swimming so I could settle into my normal rhythm. That wasn’t going to happen. Every time I ran
into someone, I pulled my head up to try and figure out where to go next. Every time someone ran into me, it would
startle me and mess up my breathing.
Within the first three or four minutes, my heart rate was through the
roof, I was struggling to breath, I was totally hyperventilating, and I was
battling with myself not to go into a full blown panic attack. I felt like I was going to sink to the bottom
of the lake like “Iron Balls McGinty.” Within five minutes, I was honestly
considering just swimming to the edge of the lake and quitting. I didn’t see how I could ever calm down
enough to be able to finish.
Finally, I remembered reading that if you felt this way, you
should just roll over on your back, and slowly swim until you calm down and can
breathe. I tried that and it helped a
little. Since I was less than 400 meters
into the swim by the time I flipped over, I didn’t see any way I was going to
be able to finish, but I decided to keep going and see how long I could last.
After a few minutes on my back, I rolled back over and tried to start again.
Although it wasn’t as bad, I was still colliding with people very
frequently. I decided to head to the
outside of the pack to try and avoid that aggravation. That helped a little,
but then I discovered my next problem – I sucked at sighting. I was basically swimming zig zags now.
By this time, any thoughts of my goal pace were gone. I was
just trying first not to drown, and second to somehow finish the swim. I kept repeating to myself that “dead f*#@ing
last” was better than “did not finish.” As bad as it was, I decided that at
worst, I would swim on my back the entire rest of the race, and have a funny
story to tell when it was done. After about half way, it got a little better,
but not much. I was able to swim 100-150 yards at a time without rolling onto
my back. Because the crowd was now more
spread out, however, this caused new problems.
At one point, I was swimming on my back for a few minutes to try and catch
my breath, and lower my heart rate.
Guess what – the sky looks the same no matter which direction you are
swimming. Apparently during those few
minutes, I must have turned and started kicking at an almost 90 degree angle
away from the course. When I finally realized what I had done, I was at least
50 meters away from the next pack that was now passing me. This actually turned out to help me
somewhat. Because I was so far away from
the pack, I was able to settle into somewhat of a rhythm a I headed back toward
the course. Once I found that rhythm, I
was able to start swimming much longer at a time without rolling onto my back. I wasn’t comfortable, but I started to
believe I was going to be able to finish.
Unfortunately, by the time this happened, there were only 400 or 500
meters left to go. Somehow or another, however, I made it to the end of the
swim. I had hoped to finish in 30-35
minutes. According to my watch, it had
taken me over 43 minutes.
Most people get out of the water and start jogging toward
the transition area to get their bikes.
Not me. I felt like a drunken sailor
as I was walking out of the water. I
know it probably isn’t right, but I actually felt better about myself when the
lady who was getting out at about the same time as me fell down on the beach
because she was even more wobbly than me. After about 30 seconds of walking, I
felt good enough to start jogging – very slowly – up to the transition.
Now came another problem I had not fully thought
through. The first two triathlons I
watched last fall both had wetsuit stripping crews. Until the pre-race meeting
the day before the race, it had never dawned on me that every triathlon did not
have them. At the pre-race meeting, some guy asked if they were going to have
wetsuit strippers, and the race organizer said no, and joked that you only got
them at races like Ironman that cost over $700. I was pretty proud of myself. After I heard that, I made sure to practice
taking off my wetsuit a couple times that night at home. Of course, at home the wetsuit was dry, I was
not exhausted from barely surviving the swim, and there were chairs to lean on
while I tried to pull the wetsuit off the bottom of my legs. I was able to get
the top half of the wetsuit off while I was jogging up to the transition. Once I was in the transition, it dawned on me
that there was nothing to lean on while I took off the bottom half. The only semi-stable things in the transition
area were the bike racks, and they looked like they would collapse and crash
everyone’s bikes to the ground if I leaned on them. I struggled for quite a while trying to free
myself from my wetsuit, but I finally got free.
I started getting dressed in my bike gear when I decided I
had drank enough of the lake, and I better use the portajohn again. By this point, I had my helmet on. As I exited the transition area to use the
portajohn, the race officials thought I was from the sprint waves, and tried to
get me to take off my helmet, and to send me out on to the run course. It took
a few second for me to figure out what was going on, and explain to them that I
was just going to the portajohn. After that, I went back, grabbed the rest of
my gear, and got ready to go bike.
Since I have an older Garmin GPS watch that is not
waterproof, I had not worn it during the swim.
As I was getting ready to bike, I put it on, but because the transition area
was under a freeway overpass, it could not pick up the satellites right
away. I took off, and went about a mile
before I realized I had not started the watch.
Given how exhausted I was from the swim, the bike felt
surprisingly good. Because I knew I had
burned way more energy than expected on the swim, I intentionally held back on
the pace. There were lots of turns,
including a couple hairpin turns. As a
result, it was kind of hard to get into too much of a rhythm on the bike. I did OK, but I definitely held myself back
because I did not know what to expect on the run – especially after my disastrous
swim. Overall, I was feeling pretty good
about myself on the bike. I passed a
fair number of people, which made me feel good.
Then, with about five miles to go, I looked across and saw a group of
bikers that were about two miles ahead of me on the out and back portion of the
course. That’s when I got discouraged.
There was a big fat guy about my age with no shirt on riding a crummy
road bike who was that far ahead of me. This guy was way over 250 pounds, and
not in a fit football player sort of way.
He had fat rolls. I convinced
myself that I would catch him on the run – but I never saw him again. I am guessing he beat me on the run too.
The bike was nice because my son and his girlfriend had come
out to watch me. They were able to see
me, and cheer for me several times each lap.
Fortunately, they did not realize at the time how bad my swim had gone,
and how far behind my goals I was. It
definitely gave me a lift to see familiar faces cheering for me.
I finished the bike portion of the race with no real
problems. My legs were a little heavy, but the first few miles of the run felt
surprisingly good. I was expecting to struggle for the first mile or two, but I
was able to fall into a rhythm much earlier than I expected. The first 2.5
miles were a breeze. By this time,
however, it was getting pretty warm.
Although my legs felt fine, I could feel my heart rate climbing above where
it would normally be running at that pace.
It wasn’t too bad, and I made it down to the Mill Avenue Bridge, that
you had to cross to get back to the transition and start the second lap of the
run. I grabbed a water from a water
station at the bottom of the bridge, and walked for maybe 30 seconds to drink
it, and try to get my heart rate down.
That worked, and my heart rate came down a bit. After I crossed the bridge, I saw my son and
his girlfriend trying to take selfies with me in the background. I tried to make faces at them, but they waited
until I stopped, and then took the photos.
The second lap was even hotter, and my heart rate kept going
up. I ended up walking a couple times to
keep my heart rate in check. It was
actually good that my son and his girlfriend were watching, or I would have
walked a lot more toward the end. I don’t
know what kind of sick person laid out the course, but the last 200 meters of
the run involved a fairly steep hill that was maybe 150 meters long. Once you got to the top, you still could not
see the finish line until you went down another 25 meters and took a hard right
turn. Because I didn’t know what to
expect, I think I held back a little too much on the run. I was concerned because I had used so much
more energy than expected in the swim, that I was really concentrating on
keeping my heart rate fairly low in both the bike and the run. My goal was to keep my run pace under 10
minute miles, and I was able to keep the pace at around 9:47, even with walking
several times. I am pretty sure that even with how tired I was after the swim,
I could have gone 9:15 pace.
Overall, with the exception of the swim, I was happy with my
race. As for the swim – at least I have one
under my belt now, and I will know what to expect the next time. I am sure it will still be stressful and hard
to breathe at the start, but I learned what to expect, and I will know to focus
more on my sighting so I don’t waste so much effort going off line.
I found some people I knew from one of my running groups
after the race. They are extremely nice,
and could not have been more supportive of me as I explained what happened
during my race. They actually turned me
on to the best post-race snack I had ever had.
They were handing out Otter Pop popsicles at the finish. I had never had
those after a race. We used to hand them
out to the kids after middle school cross country races, but I had never tried
them. I normally don’t like sweets,
especially when my stomach is upset from racing. Given how hot it was at the end of the race,
however, these slushy popsicles were fantastic. I ended up eating three of
them. If I had not wanted a shower so
badly, I was going to stop on the way home and get a Slurpee just to get some
more slushy sweet goodness.
Because I had not done a very good job of timing with my two
watches, I stuck around until they posted my results. The unofficial results said I had finished in
three hours and 19 seconds. Considering
my goal had been three hours, I was happy to be that close, but frustrated to
be that close, but not under three hours.
When I got home, I felt surprisingly good. I sat and talked to my family for a while,
and then took a shower. Normally after a big race like a marathon or half
marathon, I can’t wait to take a nap.
After this race, however, I felt pretty good and wanted to go get
lunch. I was hungry, and I had a big old
cheese burger, French fries, and a strawberry shake. When I finished eating, however, that is when
I couldn’t wait to take a nap. When I
got home from lunch, I ended up sleeping most of the rest of the afternoon.
When I woke up, I checked the online race results. My time had gone from three hours 19 seconds
to three hours 20 seconds. My results,
however, were all messed up. The way
they are posted, you usually get six times: swim; transition one; bike;
transition two; run; and overall time. My online results only had three of
these – swim, run and overall. It was obvious that the “run” time included both
my bike time, my transition two time, and my run. Although I had not started my GPS watch when
I started biking, the combined time was about what I expected for my combined
bike and run time. I am not sure about
the overall time, however. The swim time
they had listed for me was just over 31 minutes. That cannot be right. That would have been a good time for me if
everything had gone right on the swim. I
wasn’t sure if I looked at my watch when I got out of the water or when I was
in the transition area, but I remember it was over 43 minutes. After I posted on Facebook that I was just
over three hours, I think that the time they reported, and I then reported, was
actually wrong. I emailed the race
director on Monday, and asked if they could check the video. I am hoping they can get me a more accurate
time.
Even if my time was actually 12 minutes slower, I am not too
disappointed with it for my first effort.
My goal was really just to try open water swimming, and get some sort of
baseline I can use to compare subsequent races. I guess the slower this race
turns out to be, the more improvement I can claim in later races.
This past weekend was the start of the six month period
leading up to my race on November 16. I have been telling myself for the past
few months that I would consider the period up to six months out to be “base
building,” and that the real training would start in earnest in mid-May. So now I am going to get a little more
serious, and disciplined about my training.
The track season for my kids is over, so I will not be going to meets once
or twice a week any more. It is also
getting light out earlier in the morning, so it is easier to wake up and do my
training before 5:30.
I also told myself that I was going to swim on my own for a
while to build up some strength before I paid for lessons. I don’t know whether it was smart or not, but
I decided that I did not want to pay someone to fix a problem that was based on
lack of swim fitness, as opposed to a flaw in my technique. Now that I have at least a decent level of
swim fitness, I think I should get a lesson.
Everything I have read and heard says that a majority of swim speed is
the result of technique, as opposed to hours and hours of practice. I want to get the technique part nailed down
now, so I can focus on building up the rest of my endurance.
Right now, my longest workouts have only been three to four
hours on the bike. I have a long ways to
go to be able to handle 13 plus hours.
I am thinking about doing an open water swim again in early
June. One of the local masters swimming
groups has an open water race at Canyon Lake, which is one of the closer lakes
to Phoenix. They have 1,500 meter, 3,000
meter and 4,500 meter races. Since I won’t
have to bike or run, I am wondering if I should go 3,000 meters or stick to
1,500. God knows I had enough trouble
with 1,500 a few days ago. I have done
over 3,000 a few times in practice, that has been in the pool where I could
rest if I wanted to. Maybe if I can get
scheduled with a swim coach, I can get some advice on which would be better for
me.
If that goes well, there is another Olympic distance race in
Northern Arizona on June 21. I think
that might be a better test of my fitness since, in theory, I will have at
least some familiarity with open water swimming by that point. That’s all I need – open water swimming. I don’t need anything else. I need this remote control. This remote control and open water swimming,
and I don’t need anything else.
Now I am off to find a drink with an umbrella in it, and “Be
Somebody.”
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