Road bike - Giant Defy 3

My new road bike that I can only ride every few weeks

Giant Defy 3

Sora/2200 Groupset

Aluminum Frame - XSmall

I visit the Palo Alto area every 3-4 weeks to visit my fiance, and it's always a pleasure to spend time with her as well as the lovely locale of Northern California. In the past, I've always done a lot of running every time I've visited, but now that I'm a triathlete, it's important that I maintain my cycling ability as well.

To facilitate this, I purchased my first true road bike this weekend, the Giant Defy 3. (Actually, my fiance purchased it for me!) It's considered a low-end or introductory sport-fitness bike, and is not spec'd out for high level competition racing. Its price also reflects this, as I purchased the bike for $695 at the local bike store. Compare this with the $3k that my carbon Cervelo P2C time-trial racing bike cost.

One would think that a bike which costs 1/5th my racing bike would yield dramatically inferior results, but that simply is not the case. My initial impressions of the Giant Defy3 is that it's a fully raceable, competition-grade bike, whose only conceivable weakness is the lower-grade shifter component set that it comes with. And even that is a doubtful weakness; the Shimano 2200 shifter set in its current incarnation performs excellently, and exceeds pro-level shifters from a decade ago. The frame on the Defy3 is remarakable given its price. Light, responsive, and attractive. A far cry from the bikes of this class just a few years ago.

The reality is that bike performance is 98+% rider and less than 2% hardware once you start comparing road bikes in the current generation. (Mountain bikes are significantly slower than road bikes.) I didn't know this when I purchased my triathlon bike, and though I have no regrets riding that hot racing bike, I doubt I would have spend so much on that bike in retrospect, knowing that performance is nearly all rider.

The main difference between this pure road bike and my triathlon (time trial, or "TT" bike) is that the shifting mechanisms are dramatically different. My TT bike shifters are out up front on the tips of the aerobars, meaning that you can't reach the brakes at all while you're shifting, and that you're in the "aero" position. In contrast, on my road bike, the shifters are integrated with the brakes, so you can shift and brake from the same hand position. And obviously, there are no aerobars on the Giant road bike. I still need practice in getting the shifters to where I want on the road bike, but it's not a problem.

Training in general has been pretty solid in the past 2 weeks. I have been cutting back on volume slightly but replacing it with a lot more intensity. Running in particular, seems to have benefited from this. I have only been running 20-25 miles per week, but half of those miles are hard VO2 or lactate threshold runs. I finally reclaimed my spot as the lead runner in the Wednesday group run, which I had relinquished for the past month, but this week I went out hard and held the aggressive 6:40ish pace for the full 10k distance, leaving the next closest runner a good minute behind me. Feels good to get the legs moving fast again.

Swimming is gradually improving. I've dropped my 100m repeat pace from 1:54-1:56 to 1:48-1:50, and increased the number of repeats I do up to 20 x 100m with very little slowdown. I still have yet to translate this speed and endurance to open water performance, but I'm optimistic that I'll do much better in the upcoming Malibu triathlon.

Cycling is still my favorite of the 3 disciplines now, and I've been very fortunate to have a good number of 3.5-5 hour rides under my belt for most weekends now. I've added high-intensity bike sprints to my weekday routine on the stationary bike, and those are definitely very hard and not much fun. I'm hoping that the combo of short-distance bike power and long-distance weekend rides will give me improved performance at the 26 mile distance on race day.

Swimming progress - a little

I haven't been swimming quite as much as I had hoped in terms of volume, but I have been putting in the quality as of the past 3-4 weeks. After asking a lot of questions on the beginner triathlete forums, it became clear that swimming requires a very different approach to training than running.

Most of the strong swimmers recommended doing ONLY swim intervals, and short ones with short rest, at that. Meaning that long swims (like long runs) were not a cornerstone of the training. This is in stark opposition to running, in which I feel that the long easy run is absolutely fundamental for continued improvement. As surprised as I am by this revelation, my experience would have to bear this out thus far, as my slow distance swimming has not yielded any substantive improvements in my race placements.

The only catch is that intervals are HARD. A typical workout for me in the pool is a warmup followed by 12-16 x 100m sets (they take me about 1:50ish each), with only 10-15 seconds rest between them. And I go hard enough to get myself out of breath after the first set. Doing this type of workout once is bad enough, but when you have to do it every time you show up at the pool, you start to dread going there altogether! Fortunately, I've been also swimming an open water swim on Sunday that is one mile, and I use that swim as a platform to gauge my swimming improvement from my tortured swim intervals.

Thus far, things seem to be looking up. In the open water, I'm no longer afraid to go fairly hard (for me) from the get-go, which is making a huge difference in my speed. I'm still far from fast, and likely still BOP, but this past weekend, I swam with my friend who is a clear MOP swimmer, and I was a fair ways ahead of him by the end. So that's encouraging.

I've got to say though, that I really dislike swimming. I'm so much worse than it than I ever imagined possible for someone of my aerobic ability. I don't know if I'll ever "love" it, but I'm going to stay determined for now at least, to get it under my control.

On a funny note, I was about to take off for my swim today, when I noticed that my swimsuit had a 3-inch tear right down the back. I have no idea how long it's been there, but odds are good that I both swam for nearly an hour AND ran for 3 miles on a treadmill with plenty of people laughing hysterically at my exposed backside! (I didn't notice during my last workout, though!)

I'm hoping that I didn't shine too many family jewels through this rip!

I just bought a new set of "jammers" today, and I'll also rant about how I feel that sports stores mislead new swimmers into buying the wrong set of swim trunks. For training, the only way to go is with 100% polyester shorts. The polyester is completely chlorine-resistant, and any suit you get made of this costs marginally more, yet lasts over 5x as long as a lycra racing suit. Yet when I went to two separate sports stores today, 99% of the suits were lycra. You had to dig like crazy to find the polyester ones, and even those were polyester blends, so they are unlikely to last as long in the pool. And for all you doubters who think lycra holds up fine in the pool, consider than my first swim jammers ($55 Nike racing lycra jammers) lasted me a grand total of 5 weeks before nearly disintegrating due to the chlorine. These sports stores should clearly be carrying mostly 100% polyester products for all the training-type swimmers out there, but because they wish to profit, they carry all "racing" type gear, which means that you'll be buying 8-12 suits per year if that's what you use (at $40+ each!)

Wading through mediocrity

Jack of all trades, master of none. That's the cliche that goes around when you try and put too much on your plate at once. Ironically, in triathlon, jack of all trades almost always outperforms master of one, in that a balanced triathlete who is equally skillful at all 3 disciplines will almost always beat a one or even two-sport specialist who has a glaring weakness in the 3rd.

As of late, I've been personally struggling with the concept of mediocrity in my athletic endeavors. Granted, I've never ever come close to even being able to hold my own against collegiate athletes of any level, but during my time as a pure marathoner, I trained similarly to what semiprofessional runners did, and got fast enough to blow the barn doors off at most local races and definitely all the local club runs. Now as a triathlete with a glaring swim weakness, I've been forced do try and get into the pool as much as possible, at the cost of bike/run.

The unfortunate reality is that I've never had prodigious talent in sports. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to say I had "any" sports talent! This is the truth - I was always the smallest, slowest, and weakest kid all the way through junior high school, and really had a hard time doing anything sports-related. It was until I got very serious at an early age about both strength training and running before I got myself not only up to par for sports, but actually in the range of what would be considered a good athlete. When it comes to triathlon, I believe that talent counts for a lot. When you're competing in 3 different sports, you simply don't have the time to do high-volume training for any of them. Even professional triathletes rarely run over 40 miles per week. That volume of running is so low for a pure marathoner that it would be typical for me, a complete amateur, to run that many miles in just over 2.5 training days!

As I've dramatically cut back my running and biking, I'm definitely noticing the slowdown and loss of endurance. I rejoined the local Santa Monica club run every Wednesday, which is 10k training run that is hosted by a local running store. As a pure marathoner, I rarely did this one, as it got pretty boring to leave every runner so far behind that I couldn't see them within 3 minutes, and that was including a 4-5 mile pre-run "warmup run" and a 3-4 mile post-run "cooldown" on top. Nowadays though, I'm clearly not the fastest runner at the group run, and there are at least 4-5 guys who are kicking my butt up and down the block. To add insult to injury, the frontrunner of these guys in the past week was a runner who has never ever passed me during my marathon years, and who I've never even seen behind me after the first 3 minutes of running. Now though, I'm gasping for air just to keep him in sight up ahead! Very humbling, and even somewhat depressing.

My bike performance hasn't suffered quite as much (yet), probably because I've never been a pure cyclist at any point, so I've never come close to my cycling potential. I wish I could say that I've been putting in tons of hours in the pool and getting great gains, but the monotony of the indoor pool really gets to me, and I find myself rarely swimming for over an hour at a time. So my swimming training volume is definitely too low, and I'm not making huge gains in my swim ability. I'm definitely better than I was 2 weeks ago at swimming, but certainly not enough to jump from 2nd to last pace in a race to middle of the pack.

My responsibilities with work as well as my chief resident role have also been quite busy as of late, which has also made it somewhat challenging to maintain fairly high-intensity workouts of 90-120 minutes per day. However, it's still too early to start slacking off, as the LA and Malibu triathlons are right around the corner in less than 8 weeks. Yikes!

My only goal for these upcoming triathlons is to put up a respectable swim. Respectable meaning bottom 20%. This is a big jump, considering right now, I'm bottom 2%, but I think I can do it. My run will almost certainly take a big hit from the upper 10% to the upper 30%, and my bike will similarly likely drop from upper 25% to upper 35-40%. That's ok though, as this is a long-term endeavor that I plan to maintain from here on out.

I hate being mediocre. At anything. Even if it means I'll be a better triathlete for it. But I'll take it if it's a stepping stone to greater gains down the road. Dang it.

My first "real" swim lesson - good, but no free speed for me

As you know, swimming is the bane of my triathlon existence. Despite working on it over the past 8 months, I'm still BBBBOP (b-b-b-back of the pack) in my age group in triathlons, and am fresh off a recent 2nd to last place 52 minute 1-mile open water swim fiasco in my last triathlon 3 weeks ago.

At this point, the smartest thing to do would probably be to just quit swimming altogether and take up pure running/biking, or even duathlon. I'm however, a stubborn one, when it comes to challenges, and the bigger the challenge, the harder I'll attack it.

Most swimmers will tell you "it's all technique." This is largely true - the huge resistance of moving through water means that you will gain far more in speed by reducing drag in the water than expending more energy to overpower the resistance. So naturally, it's expected that I should have some serious flaws in my swim stroke that are causing me to swim so slowly. I have taken technique very seriously in the past 4-5 months, and have read large amounts swimming advice on the web, as well as watched virtually every online video of instructional swimming as well as competitive freestyle swimming. I think I have the entire 2 minute youtube clip of Grant Hackett swimming the 1500m at world-record pace memorized frame-by-frame!

Clearly, though, my self-instruction has hit a roadblock. Thus, I signed up for a private swim lesson through the regional aquatic organization. My coach would be a woman open water swim champion with triathlon experience - more than good enough to analyze my meagre technique. For sure, this would be better than the cheesy YMCA lesson I took while I was at Washington DC earlier this year, which I learned absolutely nothing from because the instructor attached so many flotation devices to me that I could barely move.

The lesson took place at Loyola Marymount college in Marina Del Rey. It's a lovely campus situated on a hill overlooking the entire beach towns. It's idyllic and serene, which was quite a contrast to the typical LA frenzy. I really enjoyed just driving through the small campus, and wish I could have stayed there longer.

I met up with the instructor, warned her about my horrific swim performances, and then set out on my typical fast (for me) swim pace that I usually hold for 14 x 100m repeats. When I finished, she had a very puzzled look on her face, and asked me, "is that your all-out pace?" Apparently, she expected me to much slower, as she said, "that was actually pretty fast!" While a pat on the back is always nice, I was immediately worried that she wouldn't be able to offer me any tips to improve, since I clearly am NOT a fast swimmer.

Fortunately, she slowed me down and analyzed my stroke, giving me some very helpful tips that I am sure will significantly improve my speed. These were:

1. A more "compact" stroke recovery. I was swinging my arm way out to the side when I pulled it out of the water. This was a big change in my technique that I could feel immediately.

2. Pulling my hand out of the water at an earlier point, by my hip rather than my thigh. This greatly assists #1 above, and is non-intuitive, as I had guessed that a longer stroke was always better. This was also a big change in my technique.

3. Extending my reach further before plunging the hand into the water

4. Keeping a straight wrist.

5. Improving my "catch" of the water by not letting the elbow sink.

6. Streamlining my breathing. I'm taking too long to return my head to forward position after the breath.

I have experimented with almost all of these fairly extensively due to my self-training, and thus I was able to at least demonstrate an essentially corrected stroke nearly instantly for all of them as the motions were not completely foreign. My instructor was pleasantly surprised, and told me that I'm lucky because I must be a "natural" in the water, as I look very smooth and picked up her suggestions instantaneously. I quickly corrected her in this statement, telling her that I'm anything BUT a natural in the water, and that I did a lot of work in the past few months cleaning up my technique just to get to this point. I'm always amused with how easy it is to confuse dedicated work with natural talent if you're not aware of how much training someone has done to get to that point.

By the end of the swim lesson, I felt that I had made some real progress with my stroke, and most importantly, had several good technique-related improvements to change in the next few weeks. I felt that the coach's analysis was dead-on, and was well worth the $70 (pricey, I know) fee. I expect to be swimming at a slower overall pace until I lock these changes into my natural swim stroke, but once they're incorporated, I'll be ready for some faster swimming.

Another important benefit of this swim was that I got the green light from the coach to be doing interval and endurance swim training. My base technique is apparently largely correct, with no serious flaws, and thus there is no problem with increasing intensity in workouts. (With poor technique, you would just be reinforcing bad technique.) She strongly encouraged me to swim in a masters group to be around faster swimmers, and I will try and get myself into a local one if my schedule permits.

The only downside of this swim lesson, was that there was no magic correction that would instantly give me a lot of speed. I was hoping that there would be a big flaw that once fixed, would give me a chance at instantly jumping up several notches in race placement, but it seems that my weak swimming probably has less to do with erroneous technique and much more to do with lack of hours in the pool and lack of high-intensity training. That's something I intend to fix,, and I've been in the pool 5 days per week for the past 2 weeks, and will be planning on maintaining this regimen through the LA Triathlon in September, if not longer.

To conclude, I'll share some "pat-myself on the back" comments I received from the swim coach today during the lesson. None of these change the reality that I am indeed a terrible swimmer placing 2nd to last in my AG in my last 2 triathlons, but it's nice to see that maybe in the pool, I'm not as bad as I am in open water:

After seeing my first 100meters: "Ok, there are things that we can fix, but let me tell you, that is NOT slow. You're actually pretty fast."

On my crappy race placements: "That doesn't make any sense to me. I train a good number of triathletes, and honestly, you're the fastest one I've ever had take a lesson. And a lot of these people do pretty well on the swim portion of the triathlon. Are you racing in the PRO division?" (That one made me laugh out loud - she asked it with a straight face, I kid you not!)

On my base technique: "You actually have a really good basic stroke. Your balance is really good, your body rotation is exactly right, and your pull is good. If you took another lesson, we'd be fine tuning things, but no big changes for sure."

After the lesson: "I wish I had more experienced athletes come for swim lessons. It's so much more enjoyable when people actually pick up the advice you're giving them and don't just keep doing the same mistakes over and over. I'd do this all the time if that were the case."