Peter Vu's Ironman Blog - Vineman 7/31/10

First off, congrats to my all my TNT participants who finished the Honolulu Marathon today...AMAZING!!!

Here's also a snippet of Coach Craig's e-mail to our participants prior to their race this Sunday.

The journey for the Honolulu group started with a 3 mile run in Santa Monica finishing at Shutters.  They complete their journey on Sunday running 26.2 miles in Honolulu finishing along Diamond Head.  This is an incredible progression in just four and a half months!  Along the way they have made new friend connections, re-connected with old friends, raised money to fight Leukemia, accepted new challenges, held fundraising events, broken through personal barriers, and inspired people on our Team and in the world around them.

Think back to that first day of practice in August.  What were you thinking as we started our first practice?  What are you thinking about now?  How far have you progressed as an individual?  How far have we progressed as a group?  Where is your journey with Team In Training going to take you?  Hopefully, you are all beginning to see that this Team is an incredible family and we are about so much more than just running and raising money.  You are all making an incredible impact on the world and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  We are so proud of how far everyone has come in their journey, and how much farther we will get to see you go in the future.

I always love our coaches' weekly emails not because of their inspirational words but because of the truths they speak. When you reach the end of the season and you see what you have accomplished, there is no need for motivation. You have achieved what you thought was impossible and there are no words to describe that feeling!

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Training Update:

• Biking: only hit up the trainer on Wed for 45 mins. I stopped 15 mins into it to take a water break/rest and then finished up the 30 mins continuously. I was very pleased but the goal will be to get a full 45 mins in next time.
• Swimming: I ended up going to the Sherman Oaks pool on Thursday evening instead of Tuesday because of a conflict with another event. I felt strong in the pool. We worked on a few drills, learned how to glide coming off the wall and then finished up with lapwork. I am going to try and hit the pool tomorrow evening to get in hopefully a mile of lap work.
• Running: I didn't really run for most of the week. On Saturday morning, it was raining like crazy, and I thought we would not be having practice. WRONG. I was this close to staying in bed. However, I decided to get some mileage under my feet since I hadn't been for a while. It was my first time running in the rain, and Dash, Erin and I only ended up doing a couple miles. I will have to say that running in the rain is fun as long as your feet don't get wet. Oh, the reason why we didn't run that long on Saturday was because we were running 20 miles on Sunday with the marathon team. Since I hadn't run this long a distance since my marathon in May, I was not sure if I could keep up. I was also running in the fastest pace group today with Kyle. A few things that were on my side: better nutrition and proper refueling during the run (made sure to hit up the pretzels, yummy starbursts and energy gels). We ran it in about 3:30 mins...not bad for a long/slow day. I was definitely tired at the end, but not dying. I went to soak in the ocean for 10 mins after. 
• Diet: going well, except for Sunday (3 holiday parties)...as I am writing this, I am starving! I wish I could have a burger right now, but it will probably be a salad with some protein tomorrow. 
  
• Hopefully, my endurance can maintain after two weeks in Africa where I won't be training at all.
• 7.5 months away from gametime!!!
• Need to hit the pool hard and get on the bike one more time before travelling.
• Btw, did I mention what a great time I am having on the TNT Ironman team?
  

 

Here's another update on my training post Thanksgiving. You'll see it's a mostly scatterbrain job = > story of my life right now.

• Running - I was able to get in a good run for 6 miles on Thanksgiving up in San Francisco. Otherwise, I have missed a couple workouts because of travel/work. I am helping out with the walkers tomorrow for 13 miles, but I would like to run later that day. 
• Biking - I feel strong on the bike despite only having ridden a few times. We went for our first bike ride with the team this morning around the Griffith Park/L.A. River area. 20 miles bike ride in about 1.5 hours. It was freezing!!! I couldn't not feel my fingers initially, but I started to warm up 30 minutes in. I spent 1.5 hours last night installing my new Cateye Bike Computer (more costs...sigh) because the directions were terrible. For the Ironman, we want to bike around 90-95 RPM, so the bike computer helps you to track that statistic. For the most part, I was able to keep that pace throughout today's bike ride and sometimes went higher. The course was great since we were on an isolated bike path with basically no obstructions and very few bikers. Surprisingly, the L.A. River had water in it. I suffered another minor fall today when we were going over a soft dirt area, where I should have unclipped and walked my bike over. Memo to self: always unclip when you are going over treacherous terrain. Sun Tzu would probably concur if he were a biker. I am also not a big fan of small entrances because I am fearful that I will not fit through while biking. I did end up learning all the hand signals for stopping and signaling a left/right turn. Hopefully, I can get on the trainer this week and get a good bike run in before next weekend's bikeride.
• Swimming - I went swimming three times this week (M, Tu, and F). I got in a short 30 minute session on Monday because something broke at the pool and the temperature was 72 degrees. Never noticing the pool temperature before, I always assumed my body would adjust. Not this time! It was unbelievably cold and I just made it through my drills and a few laps in the pool before jumping out. I should have listened to the teenage girl who mentioned "Not worth it" to me prior to my heading into the pool or the teenage boy who ran from the pool to the showers as if he was being chased by an ungodly creature. Tuesday we had our swim practice --drills and bilateral swimming. Bilateral swimming is basically swimming while alternating your breathing on both sides and on every third stroke. It makes for a more efficient and faster swim, but prevents you from breathing every other stroke. I was "so-so" on the drills but I thought my bilateral swimming was going quite well. Coach Paul even remarked that I had improved a lot since the first practice (i.e., I must have looked like a fish out of water back then). Originally, I had been able to swim over a mile prior to the start of TNT swim training, but I had really bad technique back then. I am happy that I decided to start swimming on my own after my first marathon in May 2009 as that has made me feel more comfortable in the water. On Friday, I went to the SMC Pool and the temperature was a perfect 78 degrees...what a difference 6 degrees make. I got a couple drills in and focused mainly on extending my bilateral swimming endurance. I got about 48 sporadic laps in or 3/4 of a mile. I always feel that I start off slow and my breath is not in rhythm when I start swimming, but towards the end of my workout things start to balance and I am not struggling to breath anymore. I knew I could have gone a decent amount farther towards the end but decided to hold back.

Overall, training has been a rollercoaster for the past couple weeks. I am excited to get in the pool and hop on the bike again. I just need to start running again. Maybe I will do a 10-12 miler after TNT mentoring tomorrowing. Another bad thing: diet has not stayed as consistent as I wanted because of excess carbs and eating at the wrong time. I need to make a concerted effort to eat more vegetables this week and lay off any greasy stuff. By the way, I watched "Food, Inc." last night and I highly recommend that documentary to everyone.

Plant a garden.

-PV

Thoughts

• I was able to do all my training sessions this week (M:Rest, T:Swim, W:Bike, TH:Run, F:Swim, S:Run, Su: Swim)
• Our second coached swim session was awesome - worked on more drills (i.e., breathing, putting our balance and side balance drills together, and the SWIMMING drill)
• Wednesday: I biked by myself at 6:30AM from my apartment in Brentwood down San Vicente to the ocean, then down Pico Blvd, and then all the way back to my apartment. It was an hour ride. I love biking when there is minimal traffic and it's not hot. My clipping in/on is improving. It is quite cold with the wind chill though.
• Th: Ran around UCLA's perimeter. I didn't run that hard.
• F: Went to the pool and worked more on the drills. I saw slight incremental improvements, but I was able to slow down my kicking (something coach said I was doing too hard)
• S: We met up by Ocean and San Vicente with the whole team. I met a few more people on the team. I didn't really run because I had a long run w/ the marathon team on Sunday.
• Su: Ran 16 miles with the marathon team...went at a easy/moderate pace. Grabbed lunch, took a nap (need to stop sleeping at 2am and only getting 5 hours of sleep) and then went to pool 30 mins before closing. Despite the short time, I worked on my drills and thought I really improved. The key thing was tucking my chin and making sure my head was looking directly below me. I was not doing that before and it made it hard to rotate and breathe. Really excited and glad I forced myself to get to the pool after my nap.
• Monday is our rest day, but I'm thinking about going to do yoga or bike on the trainer.
• Diet tracker: getting a lot better, I had my second veggie burger this week that my nice roommate made. I decided to indulge myself Saturday night and order rotisserie chicken and roasted potatoes. To my dismay, I didn't enjoy the greasy texture of the chicken (which I usually love) and the potatoes just didn't do it for me. It's nice that my body is starting to crave and consume less. I'm on the Huckleberry vegetable food diet today...roasted cauliflowers and stuffed squash w/ quinoa = YUM.
• I went to the Performance Bike Store to get a second pair of socks and a watch to track my mileage/speed for my bike. Training for triathlons is sooooo expensive...hopefully, all these upfront costs will normalize over the long-term.
  

good luck, coach! you and your wife will make it to the FINISH LINE.

http://training2savelives.blogspot.com/

http://training2savelives.blogspot.com/

i mentored in the morning for the Westside LA marathon team. it was an easy, slow 10 mile mile run. picked up breakfast from Huckleberry after. if you live in LA, you must go here because they probably have the best pastry chef / gourmet brunch food all served in a deli format at affordable prices. took a nap and then woke up to go biking with kyle, erin, and dash. we biked for a mile and then i realized that i had left my helmet on the bench outside my apartment. apparently, i was so concerned with clipping in and out, that i forgot to put it on. i ended up going back to get it by myself while everyone else soldiered on. although it's a lot more fun to bike with people, i enjoyed by solo bike ride around 3:30 pm. it was an easy bike ride for about 2 hours from brentwood to venice and back. i was working on trying to clip in/clip out, getting used to changing gears and dealing with cars and people. and the best thing was that i only had one fall when i was trying to dodge someone on the bike path along the beach. i was too close to where the sand meets the cement and i skidded to the right. the guy did help me up, but i was not happy with him at all. check out my first battle wound from the fall below. i'm not sure if you readers have biked before, but there is a reason why bike paths are labeled bike paths. they are for bikes only!!! anyhow, enough venting. i guess it's a hopeless thought to think people will actually move out of the way in the future. it was really nice biking as the the sun was setting at the beach. on the way back, it got dark quite fast and i had to slow down to make sure cars could see me.

one thing i want to mention is that Chris Wilno's, my coach from last season's marathon team, wife just learned that her cancer had come back. she had been in remission for a while and everything was looking positive until just recently. they will fight through it. a lot of times i will be training, and usually on my hard days, i'll remind myself that my pain and suffering is "nothing" compared to the mental and physical hardships that any cancer, AIDS, or people with terminal illnesses have to endure daily. it definitely humbles you and makes you want to push harder. i'm not a doctor or a researcher, so i can't save lives directly. however, i know i can train, raise awareness and money about these illnesses, and indirectly find a cure someday. I wish Chris and his wife, Crea, the best, and I am sure they will beat cancer!!!

go team!

pics below of my first fall, my new bike and my silver shoes.

We had our first coached run practice today. 7:45AM at griffith park/la zoo. We did drills, speed ladder and a 40 minute run.

Quick comments:

• I am getting used to the 5 hours of sleep. I can't believe I wake up earlier on the weekends because of training than on weekdays for work.
• Great driving in LA at 7AM in the morning when there is no traffic and you have good music for the freeway ride.
  
• running in new territory (East L.A.) was beautiful and there are no better running conditions than 50 degrees and a trail course.
• we're going to be having practices all over L.A. -awesome, love exploring.
• i met a few more friendly participants...seems like there is a sizable contingent who want to do the Half-Ironman (Wildflower). i can't blame them. 140.6 miles does seem daunting, but I'm up to it for now. I can't wait to meet more people.
• Dash, Kyle and Erin went to get brunch after at Basix in Hollywood. The grilled polenta and poached eggs were a great way to finish the morning.
• 10 miles of running tomorrow and then 1.5 hours of biking.