Summer Training in Phoenix Sucks

 Sometimes even Saguaros die

Long course summer training in a desert sucks. The heat is unbearable by ten a.m. on good days; by dawn on bad days. A five to six hour bike ride is a testament to fortitude even if I start in the dark. I start to flirt with heat exhaustion after four hours. In honor of this misery, I have written a poem:

I emerge reluctantly from my cool, dark lair.

Eye-searing white light.
Mountains shrouded in gray sludge haze.
Plants sadly droop in the weight of living
in the sodden air, evil sun screaming air
that wants to bury me alive.

I groan and reel from the physical assault.
Mouth dry, dripping sweat, I ride my bike; eddies of
heat scraping my skin.

I wish not to exist in the hell of such a place
where tall sentinel Saguaro witness the dust of earth bones
blowing in empty space.
Puffs of fat gray clouds overhead promise
a cool breath of rain
that never comes.

My head spins. I ride on.

Doves stand dazed in the street.
Lizards scurry for shade.
A panting coyote hangs his head.
Green skeleton trees claw the air.
Menace rises from the pavement.

Vultures circle overhead.
Do they wait for me?
Or that snake smashed in the road?

My legs ache, my feet hurt. I ride on.

Baked, black asphalt; a rolling ribbon. A conga line of
bobbing quail family cross; little legs rapidly run to avoid motorized death.

I climb an endless hill. Heat presses harder. No mercy. Salt crusts my face.

Downhill again, into false cool breeze I grimly ride on until
finally done; dash into air-conditioned bliss.

CLIMBING MT. LEMMON

This bike route was stupidly difficult. It’s not something that I would have attempted a few years ago, but since I had already done some races with insane bike courses, I was more inclined to try Mt. Lemmon to see if I could do the whole climb. I was training for an ironman and the journey towards that goal sometimes involves physical activity that common sense would tell you not to do.

Other bike riders liked this route, judging by the number of cars in the nearest public parking area, which was four and a half miles from the mountain. To get to this shopping center involved a drive through the congested streets of Tucson, which are perpetually in various stages of repair. This many people couldn’t have been going to McDonald’s especially the muscular ones with the skin tight spandex. Many riders must like pleasant stabbing sensation in the muscles that comes from riding constantly up a steep road.

I had partially done this road before on a bike, but I had not gone to the top because I wasn’t ready at the time to ride that long. The first time, the rocky formations and mountain views so amazed me that I wasted a lot of time to stop and take pictures. I had wanted to return for more suffering. Now, it was all business because I could only ascend about six miles per hour. The climb up Mt. Lemmon was from about 2000 feet to over 8000 in twenty five miles.

The first mile gave me a glimpse of what was in store. The road immediately switch-backed and turned sharply upward into a steep ramp soaring to the sky. It’s wasn’t as bad as it looked, but it was still intimidating. The first time I saw it, I thought I wouldn’t be able to climb it.

My friend and I didn’t get an early start, so I sweated profusely with the effort in the hot morning sun. My bike computer wasn’t working once again, but my Garmin watch buzzed at every mile and showed the excruciating slow time. Nine minute miles might be decent for running, but they were a glacially slow time for a bike ride. I longed for the cooler climes farther up the mountain. Occasionally a breeze would bring relief from the heat.

I wondered why I did this to myself. It was a good idea a few days ago. The miles crawled by slowly and this ride was getting longer and longer. My right knee hurt from the constant pressure of pedaling. I worried about running out of water. The ranger station at mile twenty had some, but nothing in between, even at the campgrounds. It was hours away. I was consuming it at a rapid rate. The ascent never let up.

The road slithered around the mountain. At four thousand feet, desert flora still dotted the slopes, but the air was slightly cooler. I was tempted by the lookouts, but we stopped only occasionally to stretch leg muscles. I didn’t want to admire the view where the crevices plunged thousand of feet down the side of the road. A mere short guard rail would not prevent a free fall to certain death.

At five thousand feet and after three hours of riding, the cactus gave way to trees, which provided more shade. The road had yet to make the slightest dip, just relentlessly tilted upward. The more sedentary in cars whizzed by, in a hurry to go nowhere. Bike riders that passed by seem to mostly be going downhill. They were probably locals who had the sense to start early in the morning.

Windy Point Vista at fourteen miles and 6,000 feet, made me nervous. “Windy” with narrow twisting road did not seem like a good combination. The air was benign and didn’t threaten to blow me off the road. By now pine trees had taken over the mountain. The jagged, cracked rock formations looked like monolithic Easter Island statutes, with one resembling a face. The thinner air didn’t bother me, but I panted more.

The Palisade Visitor Center at 7,850 feet was the water stop. I had sucked most of mine down in the heat. I contemplated turning around. Three and a half hours ridden and five more miles to go. The ride was only supposed be four hours today and it would take an hour to get down. The amount of time that six miles per hour was to get even this far was scary. But I figured what the hell, I don’t come up here very often.

While filling my water bottles, I noticed a cute little gray Junco with yellow eyes and orangish back hopping around on the ground near the water pump. A bird that I had never seen before. I was delighted. One more for my life list of birds.

We rode on, stopping at an “8000 foot” sign to take a photo to prove we had gotten that high. Sometimes the road provided views of the highway way below us that we had traversed. Sky Island was an apt name. The flat desert floor was visible way below in the hazy air. Tall Ponderosa Pines dominated the landscape.  The wind that blew through the pine trees with a sound like ocean waves.

The road dipped at twenty-two miles and went up again before finally it dropped into Summerhaven, at the top of the mountain at 8,200 feet. I was really tired of climbing. My legs ached and my back muscles felt tight.

Although it appeared normal, the town was still recovering from a massive forest fire that had decimated it in 2003. The fire had burned 4,000 acres and three hundred homes, businesses and cabins. Sadly, the slopes still were studded with the trunks of burned trees. The Cookie Cabin was an obligatory stop for us with its plate sized cookies.

A four hour, twenty-five mile ride from the desert floor to the forest was surreal. A drive to the same climate in Flagstaff is two hours from Phoenix. Even stranger was that I had climbed an epic six thousand feet, my hardest ride to date. The mountain was conquered and I felt stronger and more confident. A 112 mile bike trip to ironman crazytown seemed more possible.

The Destination

This week marks my last long training workouts. My last long run of almost three hours was Tuesday. I felt good for about 1 1/2 hours before I started feeling crappy. Today was my last long six hour bike ride. I felt decent for almost four hours before I started struggling. I still kept my speed up until near the end. Tomorrow is my last long swim of 4000 meters. I have evaded the deep feeling of exhaustion that I have gotten in previous weeks, but I know it is out there.

All these difficult workouts makes me wonder what the real thing is going to be like when they are all put together. If my long runs are miserable, what are they going to feel like after 112 miles of bike riding? What is a 112 mile bike ride going to feel like riding hard like I have been doing for it for 90 miles? I can only hope that the race atmosphere, the adrenalin of actually racing and the preparation I have been doing for the last two years with carry me through. Occasionally, I get a feeling of energy that seems to come out of nowhere and I feel powerful and fast. I also hit low spots where I feel my body aches and the energy seeps out of my muscles and I can barely keep going.

At this point the training is about done and time has run out to do much more. The mental demons have to be dealt with but I am ready otherwise.

Whatever happens at the race, the process of training has been amazing. The old cliche is that it's not about the destination, but the journey. It sounds trite, but it's true. In preparing for this race I have gotten P.R.s in 5k and 10k races, P.R.ed in olympic distance triathlons, qualified and raced in a world championship, gotten through some difficult races and in general have increased my run, bike and swim speed.

For a otherwise untalented athlete, it's empowering to do things that you never thought you could do. You learn to tolerate the pain of testing your limits in a race and learn to love it. You learn to endure the boredom of training when you don't want to. You resist the urge to quit when you are tired and hurting. You resist the depression that hits when everyone else has finished a race and you're still out there alone with an hour to go.

Journey aside, I still want the destination, which is the finish line. I want to test myself and find out that I was stubborn enough to tough it out through the pain until the end. I want the bright lights and cheering. Nobody cares about how slow or fast you did the race because every finisher is a winner. I want a reward for all the exhaustion, pain, exhilaration and boredom of ironman training. I have waited a long time for it and the time is now.

Comments on Chuckie V's Post

I liked the recent post of Chuckie V's blog(ChuckieV.blogspot.com) because I have found out the hard way that his comments on ironman training are true.

• "Train for your worst possible day, the one you hope to have". My first ironman attempt was the worst possible day. I wasn't prepared for a twenty five m.p.h. head wind nor ninety plus degree heat. Usually I can do much better in racing than training, but ironman is an exception. My long bike sessions weren't fast enough in training to beat the bike cut-offs and my bike speed was worse in the race. You can't fake quality of training in an ironman race.
• "Train to overcome self-doubt and to slay your inner demons." It takes a lot of faith to attempt an ironman-faith in yourself and confidence that events will work out. When you get to dark spots in your training or the race itself, the self-doubt creeps in and it tells you that you should quit, that the pain is too much or that you are not talented or trained enough to get through the race. If you mentally train yourself to resist the voice of self-doubt and weakness that you know will come in a race, you are better equiped to deal with it. You do what you mind tells you to.
• "Train for adversity, as adversity is omnipresent on Ironman day". Things go wrong on race day that you can't predict. Your tire goes flat, you get sick to your stomach. You get a 20 m.p.h. headwind on the bike. You get dehydrated and overheated. If you keep your cool have the will and stubborness to go on, you will.
• "Train to want to be done". Train to want to be done at the finish line, not in the middle of the bike or during the run. Resist the urge to quit.
• "Train to suffer". In shorter races you know that the pain won't last too long, even if you are slow. An ironman race has or seems to have vast amounts of time that you linger in pain especially if you are thinking about how long the race is instead of what you need to do at the moment. You have to tell yourself that the pain is temporary and deliberately focus on the moment.
• "Train for lock-up, as excessive eccentric loading is the name of the Ironman game". When your muscles seize up after racing for twelve hours, you have to know how to deal with it.
• "Train to gut it out". Ironman isn't for pussies. Your mind has to be in it for the long haul. You have to really want it.
• "Train the gut". You have to eat in training the way you will eat in the race or else you will get some unpleasant surprises. Even so a nutrition plan may fail anyway. You have a 30% chance of your nutrition going wrong. Not practicing nutrition will make that percentage higher.
• "Train to resist fatigue". Fatigue is a given. Proper training can help, but if you don't have the mental grit to resist it, you quit.
• "Train for pain". Pain is your friend. It teaches you to be strong. Pain is inevitable in a race. You get cold in the swim; your butt, legs and back hurt in the bike; your feet and legs hurt in the run; you get tired, thirsty and hungry.

I have become well acquainted with pain. In my two year journey to actually finish an ironman, the swim and the bike have been my obstacles. The swim is an obstacle because I am too slow and it doesn't leave enough cushion for my slow bike. The bike is a obstacle because it isn't fast enough to make up for the slow swim to beat the cut-offs. My coach's strategy to remedy this is training hard on the long bike sessions instead of staying in an aerobic zone most of the time, like most people. This strategy has resulted in me having some truly miserable bike training. Riding hard and "fast" is not my normal state on a bike. I have really fight to ride like this. My muscles do not like riding hard. They like moseying along. Hence pain has been my unwelcome companion. It appears on a god-forsaken barren ugly stretch of the Bee Line highway, which is the bike race route. It appears when I am fighting to maintain speed against a headwind. It appears in the fourth hour of a six hour bike ride. My legs scream to stop and my feet hurt and I can't find a bearable way to sit on the bike seat.

Yet I know this pain will be useful. The race may or may not as bad as the training. I remember the last race, where I fell behind on the bike time-wise and I knew that I wouldn't finish the race after the first of three laps. I remember the frustration of not having the power to maintain the speed that I needed to against the wind and the heat. If I train through the pain, at least I have a fighting chance against the elements and the time limits. I remember that frustration when pain comes to visit me. It gives me power or at least what I hope is power. Pain is temporary. Finishing is forever.

Switching training modes

I am temporarily switching from ironman training with lots of volume but less intensity(uncomfortable for a long time), to shorter and more intense workouts(shorter and more agonizing) to get ready for the World Duathlon Championships in two weeks. Gulp! It's a weird switch to do in the middle of ironman training and a little disturbing because I am losing time for building volume. But I can't very well pass up a chance to be in a WORLD Championship.

I am not ordinarily big on duathlons. I suck at swimming, but it is easier than running. But chances are that if a qualifier involved swimming I would never qualify. I like mountain bike duathlons but they are hard to come by. I raced in the World qualifier as a training race because it was local. I placed sixth in my age group, but three people dropped out and there I was. It sounds cool at any rate and you get to wear a uniform with your name on your butt like the pros do.

It's a 10k run, 40k bike and a 5k run on a race track in Concord, N.C. It's like a reverse olympic triathlon but instead of swimming, you are running a 5k. A true painfest. When I raced the qualifier in February, the switch from the 3.1 first mile run to the bike felt like someone had wacked my legs with a stick. When I got done with the race I felt incoherent from the exertion. Duathlon are HARD!

At least it gives me a break from ironman training. Instead of riding a bike six hours on the Bee Line Highway, I will be running and riding my ass off in North Carolina. I don't expect to win anything, but it sounds like a fun thing to experience. Maybe I will see some cute guy in tight spandex flying by me. Maybe it will be something great to remember when I am back to spending numerous hours biking and when my feet are tired from three hours of running.

Boredom on the Bee Line

I am not a fan of the Ironman Arizona bike course. It's a three loop route out and back that goes past Arizona State University, the Tempe Marketplace, and some really butt ugly scenery on highway 87 that includes a shuttered golf course, a gas station, some industrial areas and a large dump and usually some type of roadkill. The top is semi scenic, but since you are climbing a hill, you are busy suffering and don't care.

One of the advantages and curses of living in the same area that you are racing is that you get to ride the bike course. Over and over and over again. It's there, so it has to be ridden. I don't know how many times I had ridden it. I have ridden it when there was no wind(once). I have ridden it when there were wild flowers on the roadside. I have ridden it when the wind was howling and the temperature was in the 90's during IMAZ in April last year. I have ridden it enough to have some really bad memories of fighting myself and the weather and the terrain and the race cut-off times. I have ridden it knowing that my goal of finishing an ironman was shattered even when I was riding as hard as I could.

Last Sunday I rode up the hill with the intention of seeing if I could maintain a goal pace. Supposedly, the theory is that riding an ironman bike leg, you need to maintain a moderate pace so you have enough energy for the 26.2 mile run. I guess it's a good theory, but it doesn't work for me because I ride too slow. My choices are either ride a moderate pace and miss the time cut-offs or ride harder, make the cut-offs and hope I have enough energy left for the run. I am using the latter option.

So when I rode up the hill, I rode a pace that was harder and faster than what I had ridden in the past and not a recommended ironman pace. I kept thinking that I was not going to let this hill beat me again. The dump smelled. There were a few hardy souls also battling the hill. It was hot and humid and there is no shade. I rode a decent pace, but my legs hurt, my butt hurt and I was wasted by the time I got done with the ride of 62 miles. I am not sure I can sustain this pace over a 112 mile bike ride.

When you are riding a long traing ride by yourself, your mind goes into a numb state so you don't go crazy with the monotony. During a race it's different. You have other people to distract you doing various things like passing you, getting in your way so you have to pass them, spitting peeing, and occasionally saying encouraging words to you. You have to do a juggling act to get food and drink from the aid stations. Time flies because you are busy getting through the race. By yourself you only have a desolate, ugly stretch of highway to look at with the occasional mountain in the background. During my longer training rides last year, I would ride up the hill two or three times. Time would drag because I faced rides up to eight hours. I just wanted the ride to be over with.

You always hope you are training hard enough, that what you are doing is the right pace and the right amount of mileage to do well or at least finish. You hope you have enough mental stamina to get through the dark places when you think that all is lost or that you can't go on. So you ride where you don't want to ride, in weather that you don't want to ride in, farther and faster than you want to go in hopes that it is enough. So I will ride this highway until I conquer it.

Iron-paranoia

It's a 102 days until Ironman Arizona. Already the doubts are creeping into my head-is my bike training enough to make the cut-off, am I going to run fast enough to make the finish line at midnight, do I have the stuff to tough it out though the hard parts? I have been trying to ride the longer rides(about 53-56 miles) at a harder pace. The heat keeps sucking the energy out of me, slowing me down.

On my last ride, I climbed up to Fountain Hills. The landmark fountain pictured above shoots water 560 feet into the air. It wasn't running when I rode by it, but I did see a herd of Javelina(also pictured above)-babies and adults crossing the street. I always thought the fountain was kind of silly in a desert and not particularly attractive. I thought the juxaposition of native wildlife and suburban sterileness ironic. No doubt the pigs liked the water superficially imposed in the desert. Developers insist on doing this in Arizona-putting midwestern-like housing developements with green golf courses in the middle of natural desert habitat. At least in Fountain Hills they didn't bull-doze the entire desert like some places in Phoenix.

Anyway, they don't call it Fountain Hills for nothing. To even get to it I have to climb a giant hill. Then you climb more hills to get into town. At least the town has nice parks with restrooms and water. By the time I was riding back I was wasted, my legs hurt and my butt was sore. And the total distance was only about half of that of an ironman bike ride and I didn't ride particularly fast. Hence the paranoia.

I guess part of the training involves faith. Faith in the process of training, faith in yourself that you can do it, and faith that everything will turn out alright. Faith that chases the demons in your head telling you that you can't do it. Faith that keeps you going when you are miserable, hurting and in a dark place. Faith that you will achieve what you always wanted to achieve.

Whining About Summer

Unlike the rest of the country, this is the worst time of the year in southern Arizona. The sun barely peaks over the horizon, and the heat is slamming you into the ground. It's regularly been at 90 degrees or above at dawn for the past couple of days. The water in pools is like bath water, so swimming saps the energy out of you. Riding a bike is tolerable for two hours after dawn until the road starts wafting waves of heat and the sun burns your skin with it's heat. Running, you start out with no energy and you heart rate goes up as you get slower and slower. As a way of distracting myself, I have decided to rate my workouts on a misery index from one to ten. One being the workout is "easy and pleasant" and ten being "get me an ambulance".

1. Thursday run-four seven minutes intervals at level four or freaking hard. I would give it an eight or "I really don't want to be doing this". The temperature was 90+ degrees, I had no energy and when I finally got into the supposed heart rate zone it really hurt.

2. Sunday four hour bike ride at a moderate hard pace. Also an eight. My route went uphill and then went really uphill. I kept up a good pace until near the point of turn around when I started to get light-headed and weak. This is not a good thing when you are 28 miles from home and it's getting really hot. Luckily the route back was mostly downhill. Any uphill by this time was making me really cranky. I was mostly in survival mode and to hell with speed. I picked up the pace when I got close to home because I wanted to get the hell out the heat.

3. Monday 90 minute bike ride with hard intervals and swim-seven or "this sucks". I had to give up on the swim because I was still wasted from the bike ride Sunday.

4. Two hour "run". This was an eight. I had to stop at every water fountain I could find. And every restroom. It was one of those days. My guts were cramping and sweat was pouring down my legs and I got slower and slower. I like running north-south because there are more shadows, at least in the early morning. Unfortunately, I have to go uphill coming back. I think the vultures were eyeing me.

Sooner or later the high pressure system that parks over the southwest for weeks on end is going to move on. It will cool down eventually to 100. In October. Ironman training is supposed to hard and to test your resolve. I just hope I don't melt first.

Week's Totals

This week's total workout:

8000 yards swimming

44.54 miles bike

3.55 hours running

Total: 10.95 hours

The total is a little low because I was recovering from the race last Sunday. My legs felt dead when I tried to run up until Friday. Hard racing really drains my energy. Tomorrow I am supposed to bike ride for four hours at a mostly hard pace on rolling to hilly terrain. Looking at the weather reports, it is supposed to be about 92 degrees by nine o'clock, which means it will probably be unbearable by 10:30 a.m. Maybe if I get up at four and get going by 5:30 a.m. I will finish the ride before I get heat exhaustion. I pray for clouds.

This type of workout is my coach's attempt to get me to the point where I can finish the 112 miles bike portion in the ironman before the time cut-off. The last time I was training for an ironman, I was up to five hours of riding at four months out, but at a moderate pace on rolling terrain. I guess the theory is that if you ride at a more intense pace for a shorter period of time, it will be the equivalent of riding longer at a slower pace. I hope to hell his plan works.