Brock Armstrong – Fitness & Movement Coach
I do what I can for the people.
First of all, for clarity sake, a Sprint Triathlon is Swim 750m, Bike 20km, Run 5km. The is only one triathlon that is shorter than a Sprint and it is call Try-a-Tri (Swim 375m, Bike 10km, Run 2.5km). I have done 4 Sprint distance races now but this is the first one in open water and the first one since I started taking triathlon seriously. I have to admit, I had higher hopes for myself.
Continue reading “Guelph Lake Triathlon Weekend”
I tried one of the Tanita BC 1000 Body Composition Monitors at the Ottawa Race Weekend’s Expo. Not bad results, for a 40-year-old dude with a (standing) desk job!
Continue reading “Body Composition”
My official finishing time at the Toronto Goodlife Fitness Half Marathon on Sunday May 6, 2012 was 01:34:21.
That puts me 34/281 in my category (male 40 to 44) and 158/2091 in my gender (male). This is my second best half marathon finishing time; behind the same race from May 2011 (1:31:35) and a just ahead of the “Run for the Grapes” from Sept 2011 (1:34:32). So, no PR… but it was a sunny day, a good race and if nothing else, it was very good practice for 21.1kms I will be running at the end of the Ironman 70.3 I am training for.
I know exactly why I didn’t PR – I make a rookie mistake (the mistake I try to drill into the heads of all the runners I coach) – I went out too fast.
My goal was to run 4:20-ish for the first half and then pick up to 4:10-ish in the second half. A decent negative split. Instead, I don’t know why, my first KM was 3:55. Then 4:15 (better) and then 3:56 (worse). Around then we ran up the longest and steepest hill on the entire course and my heart rate hit Zone 5. I knew I would blow up if I didn’t get my heart rate down so I backed right off for half of the hill and consequently did a 4:51 km. I managed to get my pace back under control but I couldn’t get my heart rate back into Zone 3 and my time payed the price. The rest of the race I clung to a 4:25/km pace.
Dinner
Breakfast
Race
So, I guess when I get right down to it, I am a little disappointed but not too terribly. It was a good race and I did better than I thought I was going to as I passed the 5km mark. All in all it was a decent day and I feel like I am finally getting tougher and a little better at entering and staying in the “pain cave”.
Yesterday marked the beginning of two things:
Ellie has watched me, cheered me, ignored me, put up with me, and consoled me… but now – after her 0:51:34.4 finish – I think she might be hooked. She’s already signed up for a half marathon at the end of May in Ottawa and there is talk of an autumn marathon as well… but we’ll take it one race at a time.
On my side, yesterday was a good day too. I finished in 0:42:13.7, which is not too far off my current 10k PB of 0:41:28. I would have loved to have set a new PB yesterday but I wasn’t really set up for that. This is not an A Race, it’s not even a B Race. It’s just a fun thing to do on a Sunday in late April. There was no tapering or even a break in my Ironman training, as you will read…
I got up, not too early, had a cup of black coffee and 4 Extreme Endurance and did an unfed “Skills & Force” bike workout for 2 hours. I spent about 10-15 minutes stretching out really well after and then took an ice bath. I slathered my legs and shoulders with Magnesium Oil and then, once I was dressed and warm-ish, I ate a big bowl of “Power Oatmeal” with a packet of 7Systems. Ellie and I ran some errands and hung out for the rest of the day. For dinner, I BBQed a small sirloin steak and Ellie made a Sweet Potato and Green Bean salad. We ate a decent amount but didn’t get carried away. I had some Dark Chocolate and Blueberries for dessert. Yum! We went to bed pretty early after I popped 4 more Extreme Endurance and I slept…. terribly! Oh well.
I woke up at 5:50am (my normal weekday alarm) and had a big glass of water with 4 Extreme Endurance and a black cup of coffee (which got things going nicely). I got into my race clothes and drank a Living Fuel SuperGreens smoothie with a banana and a packet of 7Systems. This breakfast is what got me through the Goofy marathons so I plan to stick with it until something better comes along. At about 7:00am we made our way (by bus) to the start line. We milled about trying to stay warm and relaxed for about an hour before it was time to get in our corrals. About 5 minutes before the gun went off I ate a Caffeinated Gu Roctane.
A friend of mine was the 40 minute Pace Bunny so I started with him but lost him in the shuffle in the first km. I could see Pete, off and on, for the rest of the race but I wasn’t able to catch him. By 2km in I could feel the bike workout from the day before and started to seriously doubt my ability to PR but I pushed those thoughts down and kept pushing forward. Head high, shoulders down, lean towards the finish line. My 1km splits show my fatigue setting in: 1k 4:00, 2k 4:07, 3k 4:07, 4k 3:59, 5k 4:08, 6k 4:09, 7k 4:25, 8k 4:26, 9k 4:35, 10k 4:09. The 3:59 at 4k was due to a serious downhill… I wish I could take more credit for it but it was the hill not me. When I passed the 9km marker I remember doing the math and realized I wasn’t go to PB and so I backed off a little… which oddly resulted in my picking my pace back up to 4:09/km. Interesting lesson there – pushing harder doesn’t always mean you are running faster. You can take a peek at my full Garmin report if you like.
I crossed the finish line, grabbed my medal and headed back out towards the 9k marker so I could run that last 750m (or so) with Ellie. We had a good run together down the chute. She was cruising and looking good. She even managed to give one of the official photographers a thumbs-up as we passed together (me grinning like a proud fool beside her, I am sure). We crossed the finish line together and, while I was trying to hug her, she spotted Jim Cuddy of the band Blue Rodeo doubled over by the finish line. I turned around just in time to witness him blowing a serious snot-rocket. Ha! We grabbed some water, cookies and a banana, picked up our checked bags to get our warm clothes (it was still pretty darn cold and breezy down by the lake) and grabbed a bus back home. No ice bath this time but plenty of foam rolling ensued. I decided to skip my swim workout (sorry, Coach Ben) in favour of watching the Bruins vs. the Capitals.
We went to a place called Bestellen for dinner and drinks. We shared:
We also spotted Chris Murphy from the band Sloan while we ate – that is two 90s Canadian Rock Icon sightings in one day! Then we headed back home for more foam rolling and Stanley Cup Playoff hockey (the Bruins hung in there but the Canucks are gone).
Next up – the Toronto Goodlife Fitness Half Marathon on May 6th and then the Ironman 70.3 Syracuse on June 24th!
For the last few months I have been swimming 3 or 4 times a week. Not huge distances or durations (usually for around an hour and between 2 to 2.5 kilometres) but enough to get a good workout in and, more importantly, often enough to get some consistency.
Swimming is incredibly neuro-muscular and very dependent on good technique, which means that practice practice practice is the best way to get better. Yes, I do some dryland training and strengthening and that helps out a lot but not nearly as much as the time I spend in the pool doing drills, intervals and just plain old swimming.
Kevin Koskella (TriSwimCoachOnline) says “I feel that athletes – especially beginning triathletes – get overwhelmed by all the technicalities and science of training and forget the essentials like form, drills, and how their bodies are reacting to training.” It would appear that Coach Ben feels the same way. For example, this week’s swim workouts were:
It might look complicated on paper but it wasn’t in the pool.
Tuesday was just a day to swim and enjoy the activity. It’s great to take a break from the formality of drills to just enjoy moving through the water and to not worry about watching the big clock on the wall (or the fancy new toy I got).
Thursday was a good day for me. This workout has been really helping me find the follow-through on my stroke. A lot of swimmers’ strokes end somewhere near their chest but if you can keep it going all the way to your hip (and beyond), you are going to get a big advantage. Your arm is very powerful, pushing downwards from your chest to your hip. Try it!
Friday was super fun. A lot more fun that just doing 12 repeats of 100m. I am always happy when I get to do short sprints. It makes me feel like a real swimmer and there is something very satisfying about panting for breath at the end of the pool.
I also added a new piece of gear this week. I bought a Garmin Forerunner 910xt. It has an accelerometer in it (like an iPhone) that measures your arm stroke, stroke rate and distance – even in a pool! Very cool. Here’s a link to the workout report Garmin made after my swim on Thursday. Very cool and useful for me and my coach!
It’s not quite a done deal… yet… but it may as well be (I just haven’t paid my entry fee yet). On June 24th I will be competing in Ironman 70.3 Syracuse.
For those of you who aren’t “in the know”, an Ironman 70.3 is 1.9 km swim / 90 km bike / 21.1 km run or 1.2 mile swim / 56 mile bike / 13.1 mile run (which adds up to 70.3 miles – clever eh?).
I’ve been training for a May/June Ironman since a week or so after The Goofy but I just hadn’t chosen one or signed up. But now Ellie has the time off work, I am gaining confidence and strength, and Coach Ben has set out the training schedule… so – why the hell not? I’m 40-years-old and not getting any younger.
Ironman training is pretty time consuming, which is why I have been reluctant to do it in the past. For example, this week:
I am no mathematician but that is an average of 90-100 minutes per day. Woo! That is pretty hardcore for a dude with a full time web job, a part time coaching job, a girlfriend and a life… ok, I don’t have a life – other than training for Ironman.
Stay tuned and I will try to be more diligent in updating this blog with my progress. You can also follow me on TrainingPeaks if you want… but their interface for observing athletes from the frontend is pretty poor so I will understand if you don’t.
Note – 2 days after this post was written I paid my entry fee – it is now officially official!
A few weeks ago I had a Lactate Threshold Test done at www.absoluteendurance.com on a treadmill. It was pretty cool and is proving to be very useful (see my previous post where Coach Ben was able to tell me which “zones” to stay in during the marathons). Well, this past Saturday I went back to Absolute Endurance and had the same test done but this time on a bike. As you can see from the graphs, my LTHR (or Lactate Threshold Heart Rate) is quite different between the cycling (~140 bpm) and running (~159 bpm). Why? Well… first let’s talk about what lactate threshold is.
I’ll let Joe Friel explain:
As your body uses carbohydrate to create energy, it creates a by-product inside the working muscle cells called lactic acid. As the intensity of a workout increases this liquid begins to seep out of the muscle cell into the surrounding space and blood stream. In so doing it changes its composition by giving off hydrogen ions. It’s now called lactate. Despite its “bad boy” reputation, lactate is actually a beneficial substance for the body during exercise as it is used to create more energy so that exercise may continue. It’s the hydrogen that is the real bogey man. This is what causes the burning sensation in your muscles and the heavy breathing at high effort levels. Measuring lactate levels in the blood is a convenient way of estimating how much hydrogen is in the body. The more intense the workout, the greater the amount of lactate released into the blood — and the more hydrogen ions interfering with muscle contractions.
Lactate threshold is sometimes referred to as anaerobic threshold. While sports scientists may argue about the differences between these two terms, for athletes there is little reason for concern. Both are essentially the high intensity at which you begin to “red line.” On a perceived exertion scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high) you redline at about 7 or 8. Whatever your heart rate, power or pace is at this moment is your lactate threshold intensity. The higher this is as a percentage of your aerobic capacity the faster you will race, especially in steady-state events such as triathlons or endurance running races. It’s common with fit athletes for their lactate thresholds to fall in the range of 80 to 85 percent of their aerobic capacities.
If you are using heart rate to determine your training zones, your lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR) is your average heart rate for a one-hour race effort. This is unique to the sport, so your rowing, cross-country skiing, swimming, cycling and running LTHRs are likely to be different. And therefore your heart rate zones will also be unique to each sport.
Well, a fellow named Alan Chud stood next to me on the bike and the treadmill and watched my heart rate, my speed (treadmill) or my watts (bike) and every time my heart rate made a significant jump upwards (5 beats per minute – ish) he would pin-prick my finger and use a Lactate Pro Portable Blood Lactate Analyzer to see how much lactate was in my blood at that moment.
The protocol for the test involved:
This effectively shows the heart rate, speed or wattage of when my body stops clearing lactate from my blood in an efficient way.
From there, we are able to establish my Heart Rate Zones, which I now use for training and racing as a guide of which energy system I am utilizing at any given point in a workout. For instance, when Ben told me to start running the WDW Marathon in Zone 2 (letting cardiac creep take me into Zone 3 but out of Zone 4 until I hit the 20 mile mark) I knew he meant I should keep my heart rate above 109bpm but below 131bpm, letting it creep above 132bpm but below 149bpm after 20 miles. This ensured that I saved a lot of OOMF for the last part of the race when Ben told me to “push into Zone 4” – which means I would actually be close to or exceeding my Lactate Threshold of 158bpm.
Conversely, this morning I did an easy (unfed) bike ride on my ergotrainer that was aimed to be purely aerobic. That means “Zone 2” or a heart rate of 97-117bpm. Basically I just had to make sure that I stayed under 117bpm and I was a happy rider… at 6:30am… in the dark… trying not to wake up my girlfriend.
You don’t have to do a Lactate Threshold Test in a lab to get these zones but it does make it easier and more exact… and it is pretty darn interesting and cool.
It’s done. All of it. Not only my 2011 Race Season but the longest race I have ever done – Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge, 63.3 km over two days (21.1 on Saturday and 42.2 on Sunday). I can’t help but feel a little melancholy. This is the first time in months… maybe more than a year… that I don’t have a race planned, scheduled and paid for. Weird feeling but more on that another time. First – The Goofy!
We arrived in Orlando on Thursday morning (we being Team in Training “Canadian Flex”) and headed to the hotel. Everything went smoothly (once my weekend of gastrointestinal issues were resolved) and we settled in nicely.
Friday, during the day, I pushed my dad around in a wheelchair at Epcot… not exactly what I had in mind for a pre-race activity – UG! Then at 5pm, we had our usual Inspiration (pasta) Dinner with many guest speakers who not only pulled at our heart strings but also encouraged us to set the bar incredibly low – this is something I have an issue with. Team In Training needs to shake off it’s attitude of being a bunch of slow-pokes… but that is for another blog.
I ate sparingly and went to bed early (9:30pm) since we had to be up at 2:45am to leave for the start line at 3:30am to race at 5:30am. Yuck!
Fuel:
Coach Ben said: Stay in mid to high Zone 3 up to the 10K mark, then slowly build to low to mid Zone 4 for next 5K. For final 5K, go to pain cave and run HARD! Remember, you’ll be tapping a totally different energy system for the marathon, so you can afford to go hard for the half.
Runner Brock did: I pretty much nailed the Heart Rate Zones. I started off a little high but got it back under Control. I was able run harder and faster at the end of the race than I ever have been able to before. It was a GREAT feeling. I was 15 minutes slower than my PB for a half marathon (set in May 2011) which explains some of the gas left in the tank.
* Finished in 1:46:50
Ate and drank well immediately after the race, had a decent lunch and 1 can of sweet potatoes with a small simple pizza for dinner. Focused on hydration and simple food. Alternated between the hot tub and the pool a few times and foam rolled in the evening.
Fuel:
Coach Ben said: Begin in Zone 2. Sounds boring, but your goal is to hold that aerobic pace with a high cadence and relaxed form all the way up to mile 13. At that point, you may notice some “cardiac creep” and a slow rise in heart rate up into Zone 3. That is normal and you should hold yourself in Zone 3 but out of Zone 4 until 20 mile mark. At 20 mile mark, your goal is to “drain your body” for next 10K. It will hurt, but you know that already. Push up into Zone 4, and for last 2 miles, lay it all on the line and go hard as possible.
Runner Brock did: It was hard to keep my hear rate that low – I felt good and I wanted to get moving! I did my best to stay in control no matter how many people passed my slow moving ass. Around 20km I saw Theresa and we ran a chatted a bit and I picked up my pace by accident. A few seconds (not even minutes) after Theresa left me (for a bathroom break), a TNT Coach from Chicago started running with me and I continued to maintain that quicker pace. After he dropped off, I took a break, got my heart rate back down and started in again… but I never really got back to low zone 3. No problem though – I had plenty left in the tank for a fast finish and felt great through Epcot, down the chute and across the finish line. I was 40 minutes slower than my PB for a Full Marathon (set in November 2011) which once again explains my ability to push harder at the end.
* Finished in 4:11:22
In hindsight, it was easier than I expected it to be… not to say that it was easy… but I could have pushed more and dug deeper – BUT – having nothing to compare this race to (I’ve never even done an ultra) it was probably a good idea to err on the side of caution.
I had an unofficial goal (that I dreamed up during the race) of trying to finish both races under a combined time of 6 hours. I managed to squeeze under by 3 minutes! I’m pretty proud of that but I really don’t have anything to compare it to so… yay?
Managed to go to the Magic Kingdom in the afternoon and ride some rides with Franny! I was tired and stiff but didn’t feel as bad as I did in Chicago after only running a marathon. Miraculous!
Am I glad I did the Goofy? Yes. Would I do it again? Maybe… probably not… certainly not in Disney. That place is freaky (people were more interested in taking pictures with princesses than running the race) and not for me. That is all I will say. I am however extremely proud that I managed to raise $5350.00 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Huzzah!
What’s next? I don’t know yet. Triathlon for sure and probably a 70.3 distance but I need to get my own coaching season straight, figure out when we are taking our big vacation and shake off this melancholy feeling I have going on right now – I will race again, I just don’t know when.
It was an amazing year for me, running-wise. Getting the iRun Runner’s Makeover was huge! Working with Tania, Ilia and Lucy at Goal Speed, having Lauren to guide me nutritionally and amassing all the awesome (free) gear I could want from Adidas was exceptional. I doubt I would have made the gains I saw this year without all that. Then to top off an already great year, partnering up with Ben Greenfield has been an amazing way to bring 2011 home.
Continue reading “2011 – My Year of Running”
About a month ago I answered a job posting from the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Ben was looking for someone to take over the audio production, some website duties and to co-host the podcast each week. I applied and, low and behold, I got the position. I am having a *hoot* so far. The learning curve was steep but Ben seemed happy enough to throw me in and let me flail about until I got it. I think I am… getting it…
In exchange for my audio/web nerd prowess, Ben is now my coach and nutritionist.
Ben Greenfield is recognized as one of the top fitness, triathlon, nutrition and metabolism experts in the USA. He coaches and trains individuals for weight loss, lean muscle gain, holistic wellness, and sports performance. He also runs the Rock Star Triathlete Academy and was voted the Personal Trainer of the Year, by the National Strength and Conditioning Association, in 2008. Ben was the Director of Sports Performance and managed the physiology and biomechanics laboratory at Champions Sports Medicine in Spokane, WA. He is now a full time coach, trainer, nutritionist and author.
All that to say: I think I am in good hands.
Ben jumped in as my coach at an odd time – just a few weeks before the Disney “Goofy” Marathon and a Half – but has got me on a great mixed-bag approach to training. Since last February I have been running, running and running some more. Ben has got me in the pool twice a week, on the bike 3 times a week, doing weights 2 times a week, yoga/stretching/foamrolling nearly every day, and (of course) running 4 times a week. Yes, it does sound like triathlon training… and it is. My goal, after the Goofy, is to complete an Ironman 70.3 race in the spring. We have already started towards that goal while still preparing for the marathons.
We are using Training Peaks to communicate the workouts, back and forth, but I am still keeping my WorkoutLog up to date too, if you are curious as to what I am up to.
As soon as the Goofy is over I will be starting in on the REV Diet plan to “reboot my body and start eating the right foods and then to put my body into fat-burning, high performance mode”. Sounds good to me – I’ll let you know how it goes.
Yesterday I completed my fourth podcast with Ben. You can subscribe in iTunes or go to the Ben Greenfield Fitness website to hear the weekly show. Feel free to let me know what you think! I am new to this so constructive feedback is welcome!
