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Epic Update & Sports/Kids/MarriageBecause I arrived a day early (and we have the world's best support team), I have the afternoon off to sort my gear and write this update. Kids, Marriage and Sport thoughts are at the bottom. We are running a run game for January (open to all - that is our tracking sheet) so I started my day with two 30 minute runs that had a 3K swim inside them. The swim was simple:
Jordan Cantwell and Richard Blanco joined me for this session. Mark "Petro" Pietrofesa decided to sleep load -- he's my roommate and a good buddy. There were no takers for my easy spin from Central Auckland to the airport hotel so I did an hour easy on my own (640 kj; 25km). At the start of that ride, I said g'day to Charlesy and Dave from Brisbane -- my buddies from the Coyote Cycling crew in Brisbane. As I get tired, type-os will start to appear - please bear with me on that! OK, the latest bits of inside info from the camp. Top Geezer - we have a veteran and female AGer competition as a sub-set of the overall competition. I set myself as the cut off for the guys -- ie the guys have to be born before 26 Dec 1968 to be in the category. Getting some push back on that from a few 40 year olds. We will check #s in that category and, possibly, adjust. Points Structure - if you are interested then scroll to the bottom and you can see the points structure spreadsheet as well as our Tour Summary. If you want more frequent updates then Tack On - Steve was disappointed that we weren't offering points for riding more than the ENTIRE country. Here's why I wanted to be rid of bike tack ons...
Still, as a guy that spent a fair whack of his elite athletic career overtrained, the only "cure" is to be sick of the effects and part of learning that was banging my body against its limits for a few years. Stage Two - Eric "Big E" Van Moorlehem drove the Day Two ride (~200K) and thinks that it has ~15,000 feet of climbing on it. Glad that stage comes when we'll be fresh! My Tips - I'm off to dinner in a bit and below are my key tips to the campers. These are useful for anyone to remember if doing big training:
One of my goals for the camp is to get to know everyone quickly and use their names. So here's a run down of who I've met so far: Rip Oldmeadow an Aussie (Gold Coast) who's been transplanted to Hawaii. If I described Aussie, surfer, Gold Coast, transplanted to USA, movie star... and you created a cartoon image... that's Rip. I'll need to check his passport to see if he's really "Rip". Super high energy guy. Will snap an appropriate photo for us later. Two Brits are next door to me right now -- Lee Wingate and Rob Quantrell-- they are both from South London but didn't meet until the flight over! They have the mid-winter glow that comes from living in the UK this time of year. You can track Lee's Blog here. It has a feed so you can aggregate into a Epic Camp reader and follow all of us! Our support crew is led by Dave Dwan (who's been with us for years). Backing Dave we have Mary-Anne (shortened to Mare, in Kiwi-Speak) as well as Terp. Russ Cox is living-the-dream to see how fast he can get -- he's a high volume amateur trying to see how quick he can go. A very solid low-9 IMer. His blog is here -- and his season review is an excellent example about how you can use WKO+ software to track your year. I haven't seen Steven Lord yet but he will be back with his partner, Jo Carritt, who had a fantastic 2009. Steve and Jo are multiple finishers of our eight-day Epic format. It will be interesting to read their thoughts on the 15-day camp. Steve can do more bike miles (and miles in general) - than just about anyone I've met. He had a serious injury at the start of 2009 (the curse of the Yellow Jersey) that probably resulted from his deep love of continuous extreme training. Last week, he did the toughest ride in Christchurch (Akaroa return Summit Rd both ways) as part of a week that was close to 50 hours of training. Safe to say that he's arriving with a bit of fatigue in him and a WHOLE LOT of fitness! He's extremely durable on the bike. Because of his foot rehab Steve's said that he's going to be cautious. Follow his twitter feed and blog feed for an idea about his idea of cautious. He's a very entertaining guy and we're happy to have him back. Clas "the Baron" Bjorling just dropped by to say hi. After THREE years of being overtrained he won Ironman Kalmar in 2009, setting the course record in the process. You can find Clas' website here. Not sure if he'll be blogging on the trip. Clas his this thing where he puts on muscle when he doesn't train high volume. It's like those Belgian cattle with a gene modification that enables them to get super huge. Training Guilt ++ Seeing as I've been a Dad for the over a year now, I thought that I would share observations about how my daughter and my marriage interact with my athletic life. On this trip, I'm going to be away from Lex and M for the longest stint in the last four years (18 days). M and I have found that anything beyond 14 days is tough on us. However, if I wanted to do the trip, it was something that we needed to deal with. Minimizing time apart is something that works for us. I'm not sure if M has a need to be alone (I should probably ask her) but I know (for sure) that I need time alone in nature to keep my batteries charged up. It's probably this way with most ultraendurance athlete. If you want to make a part-time hobby a full-time passion then bring your spouse along. To become truly great at something is going to take a lot of energy on your part. The time commitment is material but an even greater factor is the energy that you'll need to invest. If your passion is not a shared experience than that energy isn't going to enter your marriage and that can create fractures in your relationship. Because of the above, I make an effort to exercise with M. In my mind, I don't consider it training and, a lot of times, M gets a bit frustrated with me because I am going so slow (mainly running). However, it works for me to switch off from "training" when we are together as that relieves me of pace/power pressure. M came to Epic Camp a few years back and Petro noted that I did two types of rides (wife-rides and training-rides). He saw it before I did. The lesson here is not to marry an elite swimmer (although it does help me maintain my fitness). The tip that has been most useful to my marriage (and my sport) is figure out what activities you can do together, and do them regularly. As a coach, I've seen a number of relationships grow apart when one, or both, spouses build a parallel life in their sport. Oh yeah, having your spouse clean your dirty bike shorts doesn't count as be a fellow participant! The interaction needs to be in something that you both enjoy. It is worth compromising on a good chunk of your training to achieve a mutual sharing. A couple mellow workouts in each week will have ZERO impact on your performance and they are likely to result in domestic harmony and the ability to call on your "team" when it counts. It is really easy to suck the energy out of a relationship by a lack of compromise and life structure that isolates your partner. As an aside, now that I've written the above -- the way that Crowie and Boom Boom live finally makes sense to me. While it isn't perfect to travel with young kids to every race you do... the alternative would be your "team" feeling left behind and that risks domestic harmony/support. Those families are true triathlon teams. Who You Need To Convince Answering that question specifically -- first I spend some time nailing down the source of my guilt. For background, I had a HUGE wave it immediately after M was pregnant and we didn't even know she was pregnant! Anyhow, I nail down the source, it write it down, reflect, write some more... when I have it nailed down I communicate my feelings with my family (M in this case) and trust that they will reflect my openness. Either I am imagining things, or... we figure out (together) how to diffuse the situation while it is still small. M and I have a few vows in our marriage and "deal with the little things before they become big things" is one of them. The above works well. I love to train but all the joy leaves my sessions if I have myself convinced that I'm sinking my marriage or letting M down. ++ In my life, guilt is a sign of disharmony. Disharmony screws up recovery. Most busy athletes are recovery-limited. When my life is in balance, I direct it. When I am out of balance, it directs me. More than convincing myself that I am a good spouse, I need to experience my wife feeling me as a good husband. Kids and Performance I hear a lot of talk from parent-athletes about their their kids slowing them down (scheduling, illness, putting sport second). While I am prone to fall into these mind-traps myself, I think that focusing on the challenges misses the point. Our kids didn't choose us. We chose them. I see my key obligations as: safety, education and demonstration of work ethic. I'm sure there is far, far more but I'm only 15 months into the job so still learning! In terms of getting your fitness to the finish line, what matters is attitude. On race day, you're going to have a certain amount of fitness available. How you perform will be dictated a lot more by your attitude, than your number of offspring. I have seen some truly amazing athletic performances inspired by athletes thinking about their kids. We really, really, hate giving up on ourselves in front of our children. That said, I haven't cracked the code on sleep and sleep matters!
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