Sick again...

Bad case of flu. I had to call in sick today. I could not even get up this morning. I hope this is not going to ground me for to long... I guess this is the problem with having kids, they were sick last week.

The pictures above were taken in 2006 at the top of the Galibier in the Alps, the day before "La Marmotte". With time to kill at home I organized my old pics and found these. Good memories, good group of friends from the Westchester Triathlon Club in NY.

Back to this chlorine smell...

I started swimming again on Monday (3400 meters) and today (3500 meters). It took me a while to get over the apprehension and fully finish my stroke with my right arm but it went fine. I did not touch the paddles yet as I do not want to stress my lat too much, too soon. It is good to be back to the pool again, even if in the back of my mind I enjoyed a week without swimming! I hate swimming!

My running is visibly improving, this morning session hurt (5 x 6 minutes in Zone 4) but I feel faster and I recover well from these intense workouts. I am curious to see the results during a race as I had never tried any kind of interval training in the past. I would get out and run without really paying attention to my pace or heart rate. With Paulo I push myself much more in all sports.

News and headbutt from Down Under

Good sport news from Australia, Frenchman Wilfried Tsonga is in final of the Australian Open (that is tennis!) and the Credit Agricole team is doing pretty well (well until today) in the Tour Down Under (that is cycling now) with Mark Renshaw winning a stage and wearing the leader jersey for few days. We all know sprinting is dangerous but this Italian guy is pushing the envelop… Check this video (at the end).





Very good 1h30 run on friday with 2 x 20 minutes in Z3 (approximately 150bpm for me). I felt very good and did these two intervals at 6'45 / 6'55 pace per mile. Pretty fast for me at that intensity. Today the rain stopped in LA and I had a great 4h45 ride (about 90 miles) followed by a 20 transition run.

Can't swim

I can't swim. I tried again on Tuesday and had to stop after 100 meters. While in the pool I did 500 meters of kicking but the morale was not great.

The legs are OK though; 1h15 run on Tuesday with 5 x 6 minutes in Zone 4: painful, really painful. Today the 2 hour run felt great. I took a plane to San Francisco for business after my run and came back home tonight. The return flight was bumpy to say the least, because of the storm in LA we went through pretty scary turbulences! I was happy when the wheels touched the tarmac.

90 minutes trainer ride tomorrow with Zone 4 intervals (threshold) and I'll test again my lat in the pool.

Latissimus Dorsi

First a summary of last week: approximately 19 hours in total, with 5 hours of running, more than 9 hours on the bike and 14200 meters of swimming. A good week indeed.

Second, on a less positive note, I had to stop my swim session this morning (in the local Ymca's pool shown above) after 100 meters because of a sharp pain in my right lateral back muscle (Latissimus Dorsi). I preferred to stop immediately instead of training through pain. We'll see tomorrow if the pain is still here.

Rock Racing

As usual, I did a long ride on Saturday morning (4h30) with some climbing (Latigo and Yerba Buena) followed by a 20 minute transition run. I was tired on the bike for a while but felt stronger at the end of the ride. My legs felt surprisingly good on the short run though. It is very cold on the East Coast but here we still enjoy a perfect weather, great for training!

Today early two hour ride (with 60 minutes in Zone 3) on the trainer, in my garage watching the 1995 Ironman Hawaii DVD. What a finish in the Women race! Paula Newby Fraser, lead the race until the last half mile and then hit the wall (hard) and could not even walk for 20 minutes.




In the afternoon we went to Malibu and passed the infamous Rock Racing team on the PCH. It was 3.30pm and they were just leaving Santa Monica. Pretty late for a ride if you ask me… Sevilla was in the group. Apparently they did not get their team bikes yet as each rider had a different one, but all of them had masked the brand. I'll check what they ride during the Tour of California in February.

The art of coaching

In his blog Paulo has a good piece about fatigue and how to take it into account when designing a training plan. Here is an extract: “When designing a training plan, the time intervals between consecutive training sessions should be selected in order to respect the timings of adaptation to training for the different training methods used. Working out these timings is possibly the most difficult part of planning and it is the "art" part of coaching.” I have to admit this where I am impressed so far by Paulo. I clearly train more than usual, intensity is picking up in the three sports, I do not get rest weeks anymore and not even rest days (in the past Mondays were off) but I feel lot less tired than during my self-coached years!


Breakthrough for me in the pool yesterday with few 100 meters in less than 1’25; that is not fast for a swimmer but for me that is like flying! Today 3800 meters sessions including 16 x 100. For the first time ever, I finished all the 100s in 1’30 or less.

Double run

Not much to report today. Wednesday is my double run day, 50 minutes this morning, 70 minutes at lunch time. As usual, I felt very good during the second session. I like a lot these back to back runs. Tomorrow morning, at 5.30am, 90 minute trainer session with 9 x 4 minute intervals in Zone 4. It is going to hurt, especially knowing that with a power meter there is no way to cheat!

I am in!

Big news today, I got a Community slot for Ironman Coeur d’Alene. So I’ll be in Idaho for sure on June 22nd. Apparently I won’t be alone as there are 2584 participants registered; it is going to be a crowded swim! Hopefully we’ll get better conditions than in 2003, when the temperature reached 100 degrees during the run.

3800 meters swim today and 1 hour trainer session.

A good week

Big week of training for this time of the year, more than 18 hours total with 14100 meters of swimming (a lot for me). I could not use my arms anymore after the 3800 meters session on Friday, the 16 x 100m in Z4 killed me!

Regarding running, my legs clearly felt the introduction of Zone 3 and Zone 4 sessions. But globally despite this increase in intensity (so far all my running was in Zone 2) I felt fast and light. Good sign.

On Saturday the 4h15 minutes ride was perfect with almost no wind and a bright sun. I averaged 32kph and the 20 minute transition run felt pretty good. Today, Sunday, two hour ride on the trainer with 50 minutes in Zone 3.

The weather in Los Angeles is still great, it was 70d today and we enjoyed a great family walk by the beach in Malibu.

Block 1 done, time for block 2

My first block of training is done: 8 weeks from November 12th to January 6th. For the number crunchers out there, here are few statistics: 120 hours of training, 405 km of running, 1725 km of cycling and 55 km of swimming. All that despite few days of sickness and the holidays... That is a lot for me even if I am still behind as regards to pool time.

The new block started this morning. According to the weekly program I got from Paulo the main change will apparently be the introduction of higher intensity work in the three disciplines: some running in Zone 4 (that will hurt), longer Zone 4 intervals on the bike (will hurt also) and much longer pool sessions (up to 3800 meters this week for example). I’ll also start to run after my long rides of 4 hours and more (transition runs i.e. 20 minutes only).

Talking about long ride, my Sunday morning ride was one to forget… Rain, debris and mud everywhere on the roads because of the storm, and… three flats!

OK, my debris were not that large but still...

I had to call Joanna to pick me up in the mountains; not a great way to finish the week. I rode a little bit more than 3 hours instead of the 4 hours planned but was very tired.

Back to the water...

Thanks to the perfect coordination of apparently all Los Angeles area pools, I enjoyed a two-week break from chlorine: all pools were closed for yearly maintenance. Yesterday though marked my return to swimming: 3000 yards yesterday, 3100 today and 3000 tomorrow. It is tough to start again and today my shoulders are sore!

Coach Paulo has me doing three effort tests this week: one run test on a treadmill, a bike test on the trainer and Saturday a 30 minutes time trial test on the roads. I’ll share the results when I have something smart to say about them (i.e. when Paulo gives me some feedback)!

Few late thoughts on Christmas…

Christmas morning was of course only about watching the kids opening their presents, witnessing their pure joy is always the real Christmas magic. It got me thinking about some of the presents that brought the most joy to me as a kid. I guess I did not really change as bikes were my favorite! I remember in particular a present I got when I was a kid: a brand new Eddy Merckx road bike. My parents bought it in a supermarket and it was not assembled. My father spent few weeks putting the bike together in an empty bedroom upstairs. I remember very clearly checking the progress on a regular basis. The bike was metallic blue, steel frame, two rings in the front, 8 speeds in the back (I think) with shifters on the down tube. I was so proud of it. It is still somewhere in my parents garage. I used that bike a lot!

I also remember very clearly a bike I had before (I guess when I was in 1st or 2nd grade). It was a used red steel frame, single speed, with a flat handle bar. One day my father picked me up after school, it was a Saturday, and we went to the bike shop. During the trip I tried to guess why the bike was at the shop and what was new on it. I did not guess but I remember being so excited. My parents had asked the mechanic to change the handle bar and put a bar with drops, like a race bike. Again I was the happiest kid and so proud of my bike. I had to be because I remember very vividly this moment, especially the trip to the bike shop!