Ready & Willing

Finding a training partner in the Fall is never hard with our fearless hound. All I need to do is get my trail running shoes out and she's suddenly up and ready to go. First she'll smell the shoes, taking in the scent of the woods and the mud and the leaves and the stream water. Then starts the wagging of the tail, whipping feverishly back and forth, up and down, and all around. Finally, as I begin to pull on the layers for the chilly air, she gains confirmation that, yes, in fact we are about to go hit the trails together, and so the spinning of the dog in circles begins. Round and round and round until we depart. She's crazy for the trails, but it's hard to blame her for it.

Anyways, in addition to a nice 7 mile trail run earlier this week con el perro, I took another fine mountain bike ride the other night... 2 hours in the brisk, 35 degree conditions at dusk. The smell of the leaves is changing to more of a stale smell, indicating the rapidly approaching winter here in the Northeast. It's been two weeks without structure to my workouts, and I'm starting to crave it already. Funny how that works, isn't it? You go 49 weeks out of the year with structure to almost every workout, and when you finally give yourself a break, it only takes a matter of 10 days or so before things start to feel a little odd. That's okay. This is a good thing, in my eyes, as a desire for the structure indicates a high level of motivation. And one can never have enough motivation going into the off-season.

Happy Birthday

It's official. The Perfect Storm has materialized over the Northeast. It's October 25 and we're supposed to get our first snow/rain mix tonight, with pure snow flying in the peaks. Along with this magnificent collision of pressure systems, I awoke on my 27th birthday this morning to a present of freezing drizzle, wind, darkness, and a headache that made me feel stuck in a vice every second of this day. But after relaxing this afternoon with a warm, deep cup of red tea (and 4 motrin ground up and mixed into my potion), things finally started to ease.

It's been a good year, as I've eluded to in previous posts. If I look at my season goals from last year (which, by no coincidence, I sat down and set on this very day as I do every year), I can start to head into the new year with a renewed sense of athletic self. In addition, this year I made it a habit to reflect on every race (immediately after the event) and identify 3 positive things that occurred during the race, and 3 things that I would like to work on this off-season and during next year's events. For now, I'd like to highlight a few of the latter.

One thing I learned from this year was the importance of the taper. In almost every single event I raced this past season, I know that I stepped on the start line in a slightly under-recovered state. In the races in which I forced myself to taper in the lead-up (which, at the time, felt like too much taper), I saw the greatest performances. Easier said than done, but this year's mantra in the lead-up to my A-races will be: less is more.

Another critical thing I learned revolves around specificity in training on the bike. Looking back over my entire season, I saw the strongest overall bike performances just after my first Build phase of my periodization cycle (pre-season). As the summer progressed, I didn't lose any of that fitness on the bike, but I didn't really gain any of significance. Reviewing my workouts, this was largely due to the reduction of specific workouts on the bike, in lieu of tempo rides and bricks. As such, I'll be making a significant effort to carry specific, power-based training workouts throughout the entire season.

Finally, running. I can't believe the running strength I gained over the final weeks of the season leading up to the marathon. Granted, I was cramming an enormous amount of run-specific work into an incredibly short period of time, but the benefits were huge. The key? The long runs, undoubtedly. But these long runs were different than the ones I ran all summer. Namely, they were really, really long. Given my focus on the intermediate distance triathlons next year, it shouldn't be hard to integrate these longer, long runs into the plans, but nevertheless, they will be critical.

Over the next several days, I'll be completing my annual plan for 2005-06. In just over a week, I'll be starting to ease myself back into my structured workouts. Right now, my legs are charged up and ready to go, my motivation is high, and I'm completely stoked for another year of this crazy Grind we call life.

Twinkle, Twinkle

There's nothing like savoring some of that late-season fitness with a solid mountain bike ride. Just over a couple hours in the saddle tonight, I watched as the sun went down on the trails around 6:00, the temperature fall to about 45 degrees, and the colors of the leaves turn from slightly orange to fire engine red - all as daylight faded and the night progressed.

Every year around this time I ask myself: "Self, why don't you do more mountain bike rides during the summer?" The truth is, I really don't have that great of an excuse. I honestly don't know - mountain biking has just always seemed like an "Autumn" thing for me. As Fall-like as apple pie, hot chocolate, football games on the TV and Halloween. But, believe it or not, there was a time where I used to only ride the mountain bike. Yup. Day in and day out, that was my bag. There was also a couple-year stretch where I was racing the mountain bike circuit in college throughout the northeast. Every weekend mi amigos and I would cram ourselves (along with 350lbs of gear) into my broken-down car to travel to some 4+ hour, out-of-the-way college to compete in a 2 hour cross-country race. We were usually running on 4 hours of sleep or less, bad coffee and in race conditions that hovered around freezing and were drizzling wet. I can't help but think that this what cemented the equivalence of mountain biking to the third season for me. More enjoyable than the actual racing, however, were the post-race festivities which almost always consisted of hunting down anything that resembled a Mexican restaurant, and endlessly ragging on whomever took the lowest position in the race that day. Good times.

I take racing and training a little more seriously these days, that's for sure. But there's always been something about riding the mountain bike, especially in the late-season. With the flow of terrain underwheel, the blur of colors rushing by at night, and that endless bliss that comes with cleaning a new piece of singletrack - every now and again it feels as though I'm right back at the beginning of it all.

See you out there.

Released!

Sorry for the delay in posting but, as you can see, I've been busy redesigning The Daily Grind. It's still not done, but please enjoy it and stay tuned for more to come!

Thanks for reading.

October

Ahhh... 5:00 and I was out the door this afternoon and into the cold, damp, misty Fall trails for a solid run. Wet leaves covering the floors, dripping branches, flying leaves. Despite wearing the monitor, I couldn't have cared less what my heart rate was, what my time was - I didn't even have a plan for the run except, well, to run. This is why I love late October.

I wound up going for 50 minutes, blazing the trails and finally feeling as though my legs and body have fully recovered from that darn marathon. After the first 20 minutes or so, I found the rhythm, and just enjoyed the legs turning over with the sensory overload from the beautiful scenery as the trails before me got darker and darker towards day's end. Pretty soon, we'll be needing the headlamp.

In other news, Kona is over for all the uber-athletes out there. I can't help but think if one day I'll see the Big Island myself. I'm sorry for Lisa and for Norman, but I've got to hand out the kudos to Natascha and Faris. Even bigger Kudos to all the age-groupers who dug deep to finish it up strong. I hope to see you out there some time.

Keep it easy.

Getting Lost

Virtually to the day, tonight marks the end of my annual training and racing season. One year ago as of tomorrow morning was the first time I was in the pool since I was a kid. It took months of TI drills and haphazard swim workouts before I could really call myself a swimmer. I'm still getting there. Countless cold winter mornings in the pool, followed up by the essential Starbucks stop before work. Getting up at 5:00, but not getting to work until 7:30. Yeah. That's the lifestyle of the triathlete all right.

Then there were all those afternoon trainer workouts, running workouts, weight workouts, stretch routines, core work and... Yeah, every now and again, recovery. Coming home from work in the dark, putting the music or the DVD's on and zoning out on the trainer, putting in the lonely miles. On the weekends, it was running through the snow-on the trail or on the road-in the cold, blustery wind. That's off-season training in the Northeast, and in no time whatsoever, it will be here again.

Looking over an entire years worth of data, I've put in 478 hours of training and racing since this time last year. My goal was 500, so I'm pleased with that. There are some goals I met this year, and there are some I missed. There are countless things I learned, and a number of things I aim to discover this coming year. Want specifics? Well, then you'll just need to stay tuned to the Grind, because I'll spell it all out right here in the upcoming weeks.

In the mean time, it's transition time. Time to get back towards (not 'to,' yet) the structured workouts. With so much emphasis on running over the last 5 weeks, I'll be getting back in the pool and on the bike to start building back some volume. I'll start with the weights again in a few weeks as well. I'd say by the end of November, we'll be ready to enter the first of the Base-building phases. For now, it's simply play time.

Today, I got lost in the woods (purposely, of course) but managed to find a few new pieces of singletrack at one of my favorite spots. There's nothing like new trails to ride in the fall. The smell of the leaves, the cool, damp air. Twisting, turning, dipping, diving and, occasionally, crashing. It's all good, and it's all right now.

Thanks for reading.

My Kind of Luck

Surrounded by water here in the Northeast, and not a single place to swim. Ending a week of recovery from the marathon, with only a light ride on the trainer yesterday to loosen up the legs, I found myself strolling to the pool this afternoon for a little of the ol' splash-splash.

"Hmmmm... Three thousand five hundred cars in the lot tonight. That's a little odd, given the 10 spot capacity" I thought to myself as I pulled in.

Well, sure enough, there was a high school swim meet tonight. Blasted high school athletics. Ehh, since it was a recovery week anyways, I figured I'd just stay and watch the competition for a little while. This seemed like a good idea at first, but soon turned a little awkward. There, sitting by the tank and surrounded by countless 14, 15 and 16 year olds, I felt unbelievably old. I mean, *really* old, not like the little-bit-out-of-place old. But, anyways, before I knew it I had relaxed a bit and settled into the comfort of the hard, metal benches flanking the pool sides. Ready to see what these kids, these high school girls, had for swim skills.

"Awww... They probably go all out and swim 1:40 or 1:50 100 frees. Maybe their all-stars can push it to sub 1:30 or so."

Lined up on the blocks, taking position, the timing buzzer went off. Stroke, stroke, stroke, flip. Stroke, stroke, stroke, flip. And just like that, the 100 free was done... In 59.98 seconds. That probably doesn't mean much to anyone... But to me, it hit hard.

I'd just witnessed a handful of high school girls best my 100 free times by just over 20 seconds.

Whelp. Girl Power, I suppose. Now if only I could get some.

Go Ahead - Give a Shout Out!

Okay, okay... I've put it off long enough, primarily due to all the spam risks. But given Blogger's word verification system, and based on a number of emails I've already received in response to my last post, I've decided to enable comments on The Daily Grind.

Go ahead: say hello, introduce yourself, tell me what your favorite coffee is... Whatever. Just enjoy and as always, thanks for reading!

Come One, Come All!

Well, much to my surprise, the official fan club of yours truly has been growing. Maybe it was those early duathlon results this year, or perhaps it was the successes on the triathlon courses this summer. It may have even come down to the marathon. But whatever the case may be, the club is growing. More people are frequenting this site every day, and more people are slowly becoming addicted to the whacky thought processes I spill out on this blog so frequently.

So, I'd like to thank all of my friends who frequent The Daily Grind and who've taken an interest in my zaney athletic lifestyle. To reward you with a first place prize for sending out to me the best-in-class "good vibes" all season long, it's time we assign a name to you. A name representing you, the collective tifosi. I mean, what good is a fan club* without a clever name?

Keeping in mind the major undercurrents of this blog (and my life in general), let's come up with some ideas together. Coffee. Multisport. Creative-but-most-of-the-time-improper writing. How can we tie it all together into a name representing those official** fans and followers? Mail me your ideas at "a (dot) j (dot) vinciquerra (at) verizon (dot) net" Yes, "dots" are "." and (at) is "@" both without the quotes (spam control).


*Fan club membership will be free, and will provide you absolutely nothing other than a clever name in which I can refer to you.

**I really have no idea what constitutes an official fan or follower from an unofficial one... Clearly, we still have some details to work out.

A New Type of Super Hero

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to open this blog post by saying, in a very official manner, that the 2005 race season has come to a close. And it has been done so with my last major race event of 2005, the Mohawk Hudson River Marathon. That's right. Twenty six point two (that's 26.2 to you and me) miles of pure fun, in quintessential Upstate, NY Autumn weather.

This past week, we have had unseasonably warm temperatures here in the Capital District. With daily highs in the 80's and sunny, it felt more like the summer we never had then the crisp Fall we'd expect for early October. But of course, Friday night before the big marathon we had a pressure system move on in, and with it, 30 degree drops in temperature. To top it off, we had almost record levels of rainfall yesterday, leaving today a very wet, very cold day for running a marathon. But as I jogged down the street to the start of the race, I felt good. And I don't mean just sorta good, I mean, real freaky good. After tapering for two weeks, and keeping the workout load super light these past several days, my legs were turbo-charged and ready for the work ahead. And actually, the weather was perfect for me.

My goal going into this thing was to go 3:45 or faster. Based on the fact that I literally crammed a summer's full of marathon training into 5 weeks, and the fact that I'd never run anything longer than a 10k competitively, I'd be happy trying to hold 8:30 miles over the course. Well, as the gun went off today, I found myself pushing the tempo and running the early miles as 7:30s. I kept checking my monitor - and myself - to make sure that this was wise, and all indications pointed to yes. So on I ran.

Blazing the first half of the marathon (I clocked 1:44 at the 13.1 mark), I was on par for a sub 3:30 race. Bonus! But I should have known better, as by the time the 16 mile mark came, I was struggling to run 8:30s, and by the time 19 miles came, I was struggling to run 9:00s. And then it happened: THE WALL. Suddenly, my legs started locking up, my chest started constricting around my lungs, and soon it was all I had just to keep the legs turning over. By mile 22 I was running 9:45s, and had resorted to a run for 5 minutes, walk for 10 seconds and repeat game. Not a single muscle fiber in either of my legs was in the mood for running. I had knots, twangs, spasms... You name it. But on I pushed, and by mile 24, I was back running 9:00s through to the finish.

Despite my incident with said wall, I came into the finishing area with my number one fan cheering and running beside me all the way to the finish (well... Almost all the way). As I strode under the finisher's clock, it read: 3:44:59. No joke.

I did it. The 26.2 badge of honor is now mine, something that can never be taken from me.

What made today's race even better, was the fan club supporting me. Liz, and the newest member of the club, Ariana, drove along the entire course, frequently getting to the sides of the roads and paths to boost my morale and to take some great photos (available here). During my trouble spot, where I was running down the side of a major 4 lane road, with the highway to my left, a crazed Ariana in a zippy maroon Altima with Liz behind the wheel screamed such a loud "GOOOOO!!!!" that it actually frightened me from my running trance. With those lungs, she's made herself a perfect addition to the fan club, and a wonderful partner in crime for my Lizard.

After hobbling over to the beverage area (where Liz, who offered to go grab me a Coke but first questioned: "diet, or regular?"), I wrapped myself in the typical runner's Mylar, and took my shoes off to cool my feet. As the fan club and I were walking back to the car, it was brought to my attention that between my crazy socks and my silver "cape", I resembled a super hero. With my can of Coke as my super hero power (regular, not diet), we all climbed into the car, Ginger included, and headed home.

Thanks for reading.

Or is it?

Well, a long slow week it's been, with hardly a workout. I kept it loose on Monday, with a light little Jog with Liz through the park, while Tuesday brought on a 20 minute tempo effort. I have to say that Tuesday, I was lighting the trails on fire while running - very fast, and very strong, despite the short distance. Wednesday, I tooled around on the mountain bike for about an hour or so, right around dusk, just getting ready for my favorite fall evening passtime: night-riding.

But yesterday and today were the hardest workouts of them all - none at all. That's right, full recovery days, off the legs, and nothing but carbing up for that big run on Sunday. My legs, supposedly filled to the brim and overflowing with precious glycogen now, are feeling heavy and awkward. I'll do a tune-up run tommorow, but nothing longer than a few miles. Looking in the mirror, I need to ask myself: "Self? Are you really a runner?"

Twenty Six Point Two.

Northern Serenity

After a busy week of travelin' and a whirlwind return to home, there was nothing finer than driving a few hours north to the mountains and retreating from all civilization, surrounded only by the finest and most select group of friends. That's right, this weekend Liz and I drove up to the ADK region to join up with our good friends who hold an annual October weekend gathering at their cabin. Miles and miles from anything, the weekend's festivities typically include running, fishing, hiking, swimming, and biking, along with some serious eating and wine drinking. Talk of business, work, sport and leisure are always in equal abundance, yet all stress and velocity from the weeks past simply slide away. There's really nothing quite like it, and Liz and I are completely thankful for having the friends and the means to share these experiences.

On the sport side of the weekend, I managed a medium length taper run consisting of 12 miles on rolling dirt roads to the tunes of Ben Folds, Counting Crows, Coldplay, DMB, Dido, REM and of course, a little U2. In preparation for the marathon, I really should have kept the distance down a little bit, especially given the severity of the hills. But I felt good, and I knew that I'd be taking in a week's worth of calories that evening... So on I ran. And it went well, though I didn't seem to recover very well, as I woke up the following day with really sore legs and feet. That is, a part of me would have liked to have awoken the following day and thought to myself: "Self, did I really run yesterday? I mean, these legs are as fresh as a fist full of daisies?!?" Alas, this was not quite the case, but I'll attribute it to the difficult terrain in combination with the abnormal heat, and hope I've done all I should (well...) to prep for the big one next weekend.

Zooming back down 87 (or, the Northway, as they call it - even when you're traveling south), I always find it a bit bittersweet. On the one hand, I find myself behind the wheel, watching the mountains get smaller and smaller as I travel home, thinking how nice it will be to be back in the comforts of my digs. On the flip side, that magical feeling of emotional weightlessness up in the mountains - that feeling where not a single worry in the world is at the forefront of my mind - fades fast. And soon, I know I'll be right back in it. Right back down to earth, and into my day-to-day. Into my Daily Grind.

I suppose if it were not for the day-to-day, however, the mountain life would never be nearly as sweet.