Ownership

Fairly regularly, once someone finds out I have multiple sclerosis, I hear something like, "Wow, it's amazing that you still do what you do."  While I do take a certain amount of pride in hearing that, I am also unsure just what to say.  "Keep on keepin' on" or some similar reply typically comes out.  Doing what I've always done, to the best that I can do it, seems the only way to go, if you ask me.  I have raced triathlons for over 20 years, and I hope to continue them for another 40.  Yeah, 60 seems like a good number of years to race at the upper reaches of one's ability, if you ask me.  

If ever I could meet someone "famous" in the sport of triathlon, it would have been Jim Ward.  He passed away in 2000 at the age of 83 while mountain biking.  What a terrific way to go after an inspirational life. Finishing the Hawaii Ironman at age 77 - that's something to be amazed by, if you ask me.

I can remember a time, not too long ago, saying that I would never want to be on a medication I would have to take for the rest of my life.  Well, I've now had a daily injection of Copaxone for five-and-a-half years, and will likely be on it, or something similar for the rest of my life (though you could help us all find a cure by donating on my fundraising page - and thank you!).  Shortly after starting my injections, I decided that I never want to take a medication that I would need simply to combat the side-effects of some other medication I was taking.   I'm sure I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

But every day, I poke myself with a needle to keep my disease at bay.  I exercise hard - mainly to maximize my performance come race-day, but also to be in the best shape possible.  I lift weights.  I stretch nightly.  I take naps.  My diet, while never terrible, has improved dramatically since the birth of our son - which coincided to a year-and-a-half after I started down this MS road, and my whole family benefits (I'm the chef at home).  This week I have started to meditate (5 minutes of sitting still is tougher than I thought!).

All these things I do to raise the bar of my physical and mental capacity.  The stronger, better coordinated, more mentally sharp, better fueled, more limber, and generally closer to the high end of my capabilities all around, the further that bar has to fall.

Training in Boulder, CO back in the mid 90's, I had the pleasure of riding with some of the fastest triathletes on the planet.  I would ride with (well, I'd start the ride with) the likes of Mark Allen, Chuckie Velupeck, Wes Hobson, Greg Welch, Kenny Souza, and my personal favorite, Christian Bustos.  A Chilean goat-herder turned world-class triathlete who crashed in a race in Argentina and was dragged under a press vehicle for quite a ways until someone heard him screaming underneath.  Ultimately he had a nasty scar down his calf from where a nerve was taken to put in his arm so he could use his hand again.  Riding next to Christian one day, I asked him what kept him going?  "Never say die" was his simple reply.  Another way to phrase it would be "Take what you've got, and make it work."  "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade".

This ultimately brings me back to ownership.  Multiple Sclerosis is mine.  I cannot give it away like some gauche present to be re-gifted to someone else that you probably won't ever see again.  I cannot get back everything it takes from me.  I cannot do these things.  In racing we often talk about controlling the controllables, and not wasting energy or thought on the things that cannot be controlled - to do otherwise will slow you down.  Taking my medication, staying fit, eating right, getting proper rest, staying flexible, and all those things are in my control.  I want to focus my energy on being a guy who is a top athlete, in-demand physical therapist and coach, Papa-extraordinaire, wonderful husband, good friend, and fabulous chef (ok, good cook), who happens to have multiple sclerosis.

I have my days of being lousy at all those things.  But I've also some days of being remarkable at all those things - because I make those the things on which I focus my time, energy, and thought.  Having MS is not good, it is not bad:  it simply is.  Otherwise it will begin to own me - and that cannot be allowed, no matter how far down it drags the bar that is - me.

Good Training, and Good Night!

The Intense Weeks: A Typical Week in the Last Phase of Ironman Training

To those who continue to follow me, thank you.  To those who have donated to the cause of fighting Multiple Sclerosis with me, THANK YOU.  We have raised nearly $4k on the way to Kona.  To those considering helping the fight, please visit http://bit.ly/11jTDEA

Many folks want to know what a typical week looks like for me in training.  "Who" varies from fellow competitors, to the athletes I coach, to novice triathletes, to patients to friends and relatives.  Answering always takes a bit of thinking about who asked the question.  Fellow competitors and the athletes I coach get a fairly detailed look at the current phase.  Novice triathletes will hear a more general overview of things, while patients, friends, and relatives get some mixture depending on how much time we have and how bored they start to look.  My readers here will get the detailed review (for better or worse).

I work part-time (MWF), and have daycare for my son during the week.  I try to get the vast majority of my training done during the week to maximize family time on the weekends.

I do 3 week blocks, followed by a recovery week.  Particularly with the intensity that I train at, I've found that more than 3 weeks of cumulative training will fairly quickly result in illness, injury, and overtraining.  RestWise has been instrumental in helping me find how closely I can toe that line.  This past week marks 9wks to Ironman (IM) in Kona, and 1 more week of hard training before a recovery week.

The basic structure of the past week - what Coach Smyers prescribed:

Mon - rest day

Tues - bike/run brick - 2.5hr steady IM effort bike (with 3x15' 40k Time Trial effort intervals) and 70min running at half-ironman race effort (half-ironman is exactly that: half an IM, or 1.2mi swim, 56mi bike, 13.1mi run)

Wed - long swim (400's and 50's) total 4000m

Thur - 5hr steady bike at IM effort

Fri - morning recovery swim (before work) long run (after work)

Sat - interval swim (75's and 100's) total 3300yds

Sun - running form drills in the morning and  bike intervals (VO2max effort)

Total time at 15hrs (2.75hrs swim, 8.5hrs bike, 3.75hrs run)

Now, at least as importantly, here is what I accomplished:

Mon - Success!  Took a rest day.

Tues - 2.5hrs on the bike netted 54.8mi as prescribed - generally 230watts (W) for all but the intervals, which were at ~305W.  The run went as planned as well, though heart rate (HR) was quite high (more on that later).  10 miles at 6:20 pace and last mile at 7:20 for 70 minutes total.

Wed - swim done early in the morning when I can swim long course meters.  Definitely tired from Tuesday, though, core and legs particularly (which makes for slower, sloppier swimming).  Main set was 3600m - 3x [2x400 on 6:50, 8x50 on :55] mixing up some pull, some paddles.

Thur - As planned, netting 106miles in 5hrs 31sec.  One stop at mile 75 to refill (I have space for 5 bottles on my bike while training, reduced to 3 when racing).  As always at this point in training, I'm thinking "There's no way I can run a marathon after that."

Fri - slept an extra hour rather than doing my recovery swim.  Long run done in Forrest Park (I love Portland, OR) along the Lief Erickson Trail.  Mile markers every 0.25mi.  17 miles total in 1hr 52min.

Sat - I slept 11hrs Friday night - in addition to the 30' nap every day this week.  interval swim went south as soon as I started the harder section, and ended up becoming my recovery swim workout from Friday.  Mentally and physically the right decision.  I also had a swim lesson from local legend Dennis Baker that afternoon for what I think resulted in the first time in my life I swam twice in one day.  Dennis is helping to redo my stroke completely.  It's going to take quite a while, and it's slowed me down for now, but I can already see how it will in the long run (swim?) significantly improve my efficiency in the water.

Sun - we will see, but my RestWise score is up from 60 to 80 today, I'm up early and feeling energized again (and have time for this blog post finally!).  I'll be doing form drills with one of my new athletes (professional triathlete Damian Hill), and bike intervals on the trainer later this afternoon.  Those will hurt, but I think they will go well today. 

In reviewing my planned schedule and my actual schedule, there will be a moving of workouts in the future, if Coach Smyers agrees.  Saturday I think I am just too exhausted from the previous 4 days to be able to get a constructive swim workout in.  Thus my day off will move to Saturday and involve a recovery swim (1500yds easy).  Friday will then only be the long run, and the interval swim will move to Monday, when I have a bit more energy.  We will see how next week goes.  4 more weeks of hard training to go - with a lovely recovery week after next week - then taper arrives!

Going back to one part of interpreting HR data, HR will climb higher than effort would suggest when dehydration is setting in - less blood volume with the same demand from oxygen (i.e., pace, in this case), requires the heart to pump more often to circulate that lower blood volume.  Thus your HR goes up, even though your perceived effort does not.  This is an example of how training / racing with a HR monitor (though there are some pitfalls to be aware of) can be extremely beneficial, giving you nutritional status feedback.

Off to do my form drills running.  SO helpful for efficiency (i.e., faster speed with the same effort).  Thanks again for reading, following, and contributing!

Good training, and good day!

Time oh Time - Where Art Thou?

Time.  My Achilles heel.

Well, okay, I have lots of Achilles heels: at least two ( PT humor), but time certainly constitutes one of the biggest.  I should specify that the distinct lack of time hits me every day.  I know, I know - we all could use another 20-30 hours in a day, right?  Here is really where the MS gets me, though. 

My biggest complaint with MS revolves around fatigue.  My mother will attest that I have always needed more sleep than any other human she has ever met, and my wife (who needs less sleep than any other human I've ever met) would wholly agrees Truth be told, I love sleeping.  10 years ago if you asked me how much sleep I could use every night to optimize my function, I'd have said 9-10 hours at night, and I'm good to roll all day long, at least when training hard.  A nap once in a while filled the gaps formed by work, exercise, and being social (though I should point out that exercising with friends was a huge component of my social life - two birds with one stone!).  

Enter MS.  And one correction:  I loved sleeping.  Particularly since 2011, I have been tired.  My son was born in 2009, and while that first year was exceptionally difficult to someone who at the time loved sleep, it was not the worst.  That year my wife suggested that I  accept that I needed  a nap every day.  I did, though I made the mental note that needing and wanting a nap had distinctly different connotations in my head.   But (as usual), she was right, and things got a bit better.  Now I accept that I could for optimal function, I would need 11-14hrs of sleep per day.  Not conducive to living a "full" life.

Now I know a thought that crossed some minds reading this:  "Chris, you were training for 2 Ironman Triathlons that year - surely that accounts for a significant portion of your tiredness."  I will not disagree on that point at all!  Naps certainly help when training hard.  In fact, I've heard that research has shown that successful people of all fields find time to shut down for brief periods regularly throughout the day. I highly recommend naps to my athletes (and friends, and wife, and we both agree that our son benefits from them).

I disagree that the training puts the nail in the coffin for one, repeatable reason:  when I have a period of lighter training (or no training in off-season), I need far longer naps.  How much longer?  When training hard, I will feel a night and day difference off 10-30 minutes of napping.  When not training, I will finally feel that same night and day difference after 60-90 minutes of napping.  I put that in the significantly longer category.  My MD thinks it likely a product of sleeping harder at night when I'm training hard (as I really am physically tired from exercise).  I guess I'd buy that, though I suspect there's more to it than that.

Regardless of why, though, I've got a time suck:  train hard, but sleep less (an oxymoron if ever I've heard one), or train less and sleep more.  I know one thing:  MS leads to functional loss.  The stronger I stay, the more coordinated I am, the better my endurance, the more likely I'll still be able to function better than had I not been training hard all along.

Someone asked me if I plan to keep trying to get back to Kona after this year.  So long as it keeps me motivated to stay exceedingly fit, and my family permits me, you bet your butt I'll keep trying to go back.  It's my best defense against the inevitable. 

I just wish I didn't need a nap every day - and that it my wife wouldn't have to suggest (because it's obvious) that I go lay down and that she's happy to take care of our boy.  She is, of course, right again.  And while I no longer argue with her about that, I have come to the point over the last 6 months to resent the nap I used to cherish so much.  I could get so much more done if I didn't need all this damn sleep.

I'm just thankful I have such a wonderful wife and child who help me out.

With that, good training, and good night.