Cervelo P2C Dura-Ace

I can't believe I just did this, but I went out and promptly dropped $2700 (that would be $1000 more than I had planned to spend!) on one of the best triathlon bikes in the world. Words can't do it justice, especially for someone of my inexperience on tribikes, so I'll let the picture speak for itself for now. (Click on the picture to blow it up.)

The Cervelo P2C

Carbon Fiber Frame
Dura-Ace Components
Winner of the Ironman World Championship
I'm definitely not worthy of this bike!

Not getting much better, unfortunately

My foot is really driving me nuts as of late. After sustaining a stress fracture (actually, stress reaction) after the San Diego marathon in late June, I have been doing absolutely no running in an effort to let my foot heal. I have been continuously swimming and biking at this time, sometimes intensely, but I am quite certain that both these activities are not aggravating my foot.

Well, after several weeks of definite improvement after a nearly 8 week hiatus from running, I decided to try out 2 miles of running on the treadmill. As much as I hate running indoors, it felt great to get running again, and I felt surprisingly strong on my legs given my time off. (Cross-training definitely works to some degree.)

Unfortunately, things went quickly downhill from there. My foot pain went from nagging to annoying, and despite no further running for the next 5 days, it continued to worsen. Today, I've been struggling with a sore left foot, which has somehow actually become point-tender over the region of pain. I'm pretty much back to how I was feeling about 4-5 weeks ago, with almost no improvement. Very, very disappointing.

I've got an upcoming appointment with the doctor in a week, and I will plan on getting a followup MRI to make sure things are looking in order. I doubt that I've re-injured it, and I'm hoping that I'm just facing a re-hab period that will be somewhat uncomfortable and at times painful, but before I go for it, I'm definitely going to clear myself with the imaging.

In the interim, plans have become nearly definite for my becoming an interim triathlete with a bike & swim focus. I am debating between the purchase of a pricey Cervelo P1 or P2SL ($1800) versus an world-class all-carbon bike that I can ride for the next decade and more ($2500!!). I am also currently in the midst of applying for radiology fellowships in musculoskeletal radiology, so things have been busy as of late, but once I get all my papers in, I will be going all-out on the triathlon buildup.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to bail on my second planned race this year, which was the swim-run duathlon in Malibu, which is taking place this weekend. I would have loved to test my new swim skills in open water, but alas, I would probably exacerbate my running injury.

Interestingly enough, I still feel like a marathoner. I may be very out-of-shape with regards to running long distances, and there is absolutely no way that I could even complete part of one in my current condition, but I do feel that my mental desire and my physical ability is still there, and just waiting to burst out at the next moment. By maintaining a very active workout regiment with 60-120 minutes of run/bike per day, I've also maintained the discipline to keep a major athletic pursuit in my schedule. No slacking here! I'm mentally rearing to give the Pfitz another go, but will probably divert my energy to biking and swimming until I'm sure that I can give it a good shot on the run. But watch out all you SoCal age group runners - when I'm back, I'll be coming back strong!

Tris are expensive

Triathlons are EXPENSIVE. I'm in the process of doing a budget for realistic expenditures for tris, and here's what I'm coming up with:

- Triathlon Bike: Cervelo P1 with Ultegra Set: $1900
- Bike accessories and clothing: $600
- Wetsuit: $300
- Pool swimwear: $100
- Running gear: $0 (I've stocked up on shoes and clothes from marathoning!)
- Triathlon race fees and bike transport: $500 (local races only for me until I get better)
- Gym membership: $350 per year
- Other miscellaneous: $500

That totals roughly $4150, so I'd guesstimate $5000 to just break into triathlons. That hurts. Big time. Even worse, is that aside from the expensive tri bike frame, all of the expenses listed above are non-permanent expenditures, meaning that they will likely have to be re-spent next year. The chlorine from the pool eats your swim trunks (mine are nearly eaten through in 2 months!), the wetsuit loses effectiveness after 30 or so ocean swims, the gym membership expires, and the race fees are just for one race at a time. Even the bike parts wear out. Triathlons are indeed, a very, very expensive hobby. Marathoning is budget in comparison!

I'll just use the rest of this post to comment again on my swimming, which has finally (!) progressed to the stage where I can actually complete an interval workout. I definitely was unable to do this 4 weeks ago, so this represents a big step forward for me. I just started following training plans from "The Essential Triathlete Training Plans" book by Matt Fitzgerald - it reads sort of like a Pfitz for triathletes, so it's perfect for me.

Here are the results of my first real timed pool intervals, done in a 25m pool:
8 x 100m hard repeats, 20 seconds rest: 1:54-1:57 / 100m.
4 x 50m harder repeats, 25 seconds rest: 48-50 sec / 50m
Hard kicking drill on my side: 33sec/25m
Easy pace: 2:00/100m

Compare to 4 weeks ago: maximum sprint speed 100m: 2:10 (yup, slower than my easy pace now).

For all you non-swimmers out there - these are considered pretty SLOW paces for a triathlete swimmer. Not terrible, but definitely nowhere near competitive fast. Based upon race results I've browsed, these results would be expected from a triathlete who runs a 10k at approximately 10:00-11:00min mile runner ability level, which is about right given my total rookiness at swimming. Swimming hard is amazingly challenging for me, and I definitely consider myself fairly muscular in the upper body from lots of weightlifting. I'm impressed by how hard I have to pull just to reach a pace that experienced midlevel swimmers toss off in their warmups or in ultra-long endurance races.

At the same time, I'm encouraged by the rapid improvements I've made. I've gone from barely being able to finish 500m at once to being able to swim with strong force (for me) for a respectable distance. I'm also very happy with my progress with my form and short-distance power swimming - in the past 5 weeks, I've progressed from having zero ability to swim fast, to developing a real increase in speed with the shorter repeats.

I don't expect to dramatically improve quickly from here on out. I've made all the easy technique-related gains, and feel that I've got a respectable stroke (13-14 strokes / 25m) with good body position and rotation for a beginner, and now I have to put the time and effort into both distance and speedwork to improve.

And last thing - I can once again sympathize with all the newbie runners who balk at doing speedwork for the first time. New speedwork is HARD! As a runner, I thrive on speedwork, and although challenging, have always found these workouts invigorating and something I look forward to. However as a weak swimmer, those intervals are scary at first - I wasn't sure I'd finish them at all! Definitely puts things in perspective from a multidisciplinary standpoint.

Getting back to a different groove

This week is probably the first week where I've noticed a definite improvement in the foot pain from my left 4th metatarsal stress fracture. For the past 4 weeks, I've been doing no running at all, but was worried that walking and cycling was stressing it unnecessarily, but I suspect that I simply couldn't notice the small incremental healing improvements that were going on. Now, about 6 weeks out from when I stopped running completely, I can say that there has a been a definite improvement, to about 50% of what it was before. Unfortunately, it's still there, and I do have a bad day or two during the week where it flares up more than usual and I worry about it, but on the whole, I am now convinced that things are definitely on the up and up.

I still terribly miss running, but my new gym-workout lifestyle has been coming along excellently. Indoor cycling has become much more solid, and my legs are definitely now keeping up with my cardio, pushing things along at 140+ bpm for an hour plus without a premature fade. I've already ratcheted up the bike resistance from my initial level of 6 (whatever that means on this Lifecycle bike) to a significantly harder 7, for over half of my typical 45-60 minute ride, and I'm feeling much less lactate accumulation in my legs. These gains translated well to a strong 2 hour mountain bike ride I did yesterday. Usually I have to ride out of the saddle for the steepest uphills when I'm not cycling regularly, but this time around, I felt strong in the seated position for virtually the entire ride, managing to power into anaerobic threshold as well while maintaining the seated position. This is definitely a significant improvement for my cycling ability, and I'm pleased to see the progress.

My swimming has also been progressing continuously. I've been doing dual bike/swim workouts every day, 5-6x per week, so I've been feeling very comfortable in the pool as of late. My form has definitely improved, to the point where I feel comfortable breathing on both sides in my crawl stroke, and I can actually put a decent effort into the stroke power. I'm still definitely a rank beginner at the swim, but for the first time, I feel that I would be strong enough to complete the swim leg (slowly) of an Olympic-distance triathlon. I'm hoping for more improvements in the next months, so that I feel that I can actually put a race-effort (versus survival effort) into that distance swim.

I also received an unexpected blessing in the cost of my gym membership. I joined a Ballys within walking distance from my apartment, but initially balked hard at the 3-year minimum membership duration as well as $1100 cost of membership over the 3 years. I will likely leave Los Angeles proper for my fellowship training in 2 years, so 1 of those years I'm paying for would be simply wasted, but with my busy schedule and the horrendous LA traffic, I couldn't find any other gym that I'd go to nearly as often. I unexpectedly received an call from Ballys offering to cut my membership rate to $750 for the entire 3 years if I paid it full at the start. That makes it a much better proposition, even for 2 years, and one that I would have gladly jumped all over had it been that cost from the start. It's nice when details like this work out in your favor - although I still generally disapprove of all the fine print in Bally's gym contracts, which significantly differed from what the non-knowlegable staff were trying to sell me. Bottom line if you join a gym - it can be worth it, but definitely, absolutely, read the fine print - if I didn't, I would have been very dismayed to see that the "easy cancellations" that the staff had promised were in fact, impossibly difficult.

Unfortunately, despite all my fitness efforts, I doubt that I will be back in running form until October, and after then, it will take at least one 18 week Pfitz cycle to get back to where I was before. So a BQ marathon attemptlooks like it's not going to happen until spring of next year. As I planned, I will probably become a triathlete for the next 4-6 months in earnest to not over-do the running portion and reinjure my foot early on. After that, I fully anticipate to get back to Pfitz 70mpw without difficulty.

Last comment on my experience thus far with cycling and swimming versus running. Running, to me, is WAY harder on the body. It's not even close, in my opinion. Sure, you can aerobically exhaust yourself on all events, and I am definitely far stronger on the run than the other two sports, but suffice to say that I can cycle or swim for 2 hours at a time at fairly good intensity (130-160bpm) without getting really beaten down. In contrast, running for the same duration always gives me a good hammering, both on the joints and muscles. I haven't felt the same beat-down I get from the marathon training long runs or lactate runs in any of my bike or swim workouts, and that includes intervals. Whereas in marathon training, the limiting factor during the Pfitz training program was usually accumulated fatigue and wear, in my early tri-training, the limiting factor seems to time, and not the body. We'll see if this ratio changes down the road as I become stronger on the other 2 discplines.