The 5,000 Barrier & Some Biking

A sign next to the entrance to the Mass Rapid Transit system in Kaohsiung. Bicycles are allowed to ride on the (pink) sidewalk, thus making getting around this city a less intimidating experience. Kaohsiung boasts a fairly lengthy system of cycle paths. While there are still many "gaps" in the system (where one has to risk life and limb contending with the motor scooters and other vehicles), what has been done so far is at least a major step in the right direction.

I got to bed slightly earlier last night as my mind got too tired to work on my computer even before 10 pm. This morning I entered the pool at 6:10 am, which left me 1hr 50m. Within a couple of hundred meters, my crawl stroke felt very comfortable and I focused on the underwater pull towards the end of the stroke. In fact I got a little overconfident and slightly overstretched my right arm, so I was a little sore, at least from the 3,000m mark. So I focused more on relaxed controlled swimming, and no heroics. I reached 5,000m at 7:55 am. At that point, several friends were lined up, each having one lane to himself, and they wanted to do a 100m race. So the lifeguard started us off, but I was never really in contention. I guess I did not really have the energy to push it, so I just tried to swim smoothly and just kick harder (and not aggravate my shoulder). The swimming coach friend apparently finished in about 1:26, with me a distant second about 1:30 or 1:31, and the other two a few seconds further back.


During my first 1,000m today, I particularly sensed that I was gliding in the water, by getting a good follow through at the end of the stroke. My right hand still has trouble getting into the right trajectory when I push late in the stroke, but I am trying to work on this. Smooth, relaxed swimming, with a good feel for the water, is a great help here.


After changing and drinking my ensure and briefly chatting with the other swimmers, I set off on my (mountain) bike planning to ride for 30 mins, but I ended up riding one hour. Besides going past the graveyards and rice paddies in the lane behind the trash incinerator, I continued on and did one loop of the Cheng Ching Lake, the huge lake next to which I plan to do some running later on. The sun was shining and the color of the water (either sapphire, turquoise or aquamarine or a mixture of them all), as I rode along the edge and looked out from one end of the lake, was breathtaking. I did not have a camera with me today, but I am sure there will be many more equally sunny days in the weeks to come. Riding round the lake is quite hilly, because, while the water is of course flat, the road is about 200 feet above the lake at the top end, and at the water's level at the other. Riding around it is quite therapeutic for me. I can enjoy Dr. Sunshine for an hour (which you can't in an indoor swimming pool), and after 8:00 am here in Kaohsiung there is usually much less commuter traffic (i.e., far fewer dangerous and smoke-belching motor scooters).


In spite of all the training today, I stopped at the local outdoor market and bought some potatoes and tomatos as I neared home and reached the house at around 9:30 am. So it is not as if my training has taken all day, although I have yet to see if I can still concentrate properly on my work.


In many ways, I kind of like living in Kaohsiung. The weather is like that in Hawaii, only a bit warmer, and the lifestyle is pretty laid back and people are generally friendly, and you can get just about everything you need here. I even have swimming friends at the pool who go surfing in the ocean only on the other side of town from where we live.

More Swimming & Recollections of St. Croix

This MRT (mass rapid transit) station is a 10-minute cycle ride from our home on flat roads. It was only opened less than a couple of months ago. The bike can be locked outside (for free) and it is seven stops to get to Costco (which is about a 5-min walk away from the MRT), or one stop to the HSR (high-speed rail) if you want to take the Shinkansen at 298 kph to Taipei. The name of the station "Ecological District" is hopefully part of a plan to make this part of the city more beautiful and to encourage people to live healthy lives.

Yesterday (Monday) was my day off, and after all the euphoria of following the live radio broadcast from St. Croix on Sunday evening (Taiwan time), I just got on with my work, and only went out for about 30 mins leisurely biking just before sundown.


I felt a little tired this (Tuesday) morning but got up and biked fairly quickly to the pool, as in spite of all that, I only entered the water at 6:20am. I felt a little wooden and sluggish, and basically mostly just swam non-stop. Visibility was not very good (the lights were off, but it was cloudy outside and the pool seemed rather murky), and so I had to look pretty carefully just to avoid the possibility of a collision with another swimmer. Fortunately, from about the 3,000m mark on, I was left with a reasonably good swimmer sharing the lane, which made navigation a lot easier.


At 7:55am, my two friends challenged me to 100m. I wasn't too keen as I thought they would beat me easily today. However, I took off down the first stretch pretty fast, but held my slower, longish stroke most of the way, and despite just pushing off at the turns, no one really challenged me. So it felt good at least to beat that other guy for the first time. A subsequent 50m, though, left me over a length behind my friend, who obviously must be relatively good over short distances. My pace was slower I think than the first 50m of the previous 100m. I wasn't tired, but I just tried to push it and I became inefficient.


After I got changed having finished swimming (today I recorded 4,250 meters), I drank a small can of "Ensure", a kind of condensed milk drink with some carbs but a lot of calories. It may not be the best thing for me, but I am at least trying to eat more. I then rode a fairly easy 30-40 minutes along various quiet lanes on both sides of the freeway. They are good for an MTB, plenty of small inclines and twists and turns, and a fair amount of debris on the road (I realized I had a slowish flat tire close to reaching home). I wish Maui was closer to home (for the X-terra).


Following the St. Croix race was a real treat with their radio updates (I wish the same could be said for the Wildflower), and especially that at first they were only talking about the famous pros with their funny colored swim caps, but then at some point they suddenly mentioned "Bree Wee". Who is Bree Wee? Later, when she had not died of exhaustion due to going out too fast, but was still in the lead pack of bikers, they commentators did their homework and found out she had broken the amateur Hawaii Ironman course record last year. However, I somehow do not think they could have envisaged a rookie lasting throughout the race, and who would, since Felicity started to burn out on the run, and when they confused Bree's number with that of what would have been a suddenly back-to-life Julie Dibens, I even had my doubts myself. It was the same at the Ironman last year. At first it was all Michellie and Natasha, but after they started getting into difficulty, eventually it was some unknown "Chrissy" who was too far out in front to last. However, she actually further extended her lead. I guess I'm a little partial towards people from the UK. (I wish Julie the best next time.)


It is a lot of fun to win something. Obviously, it is often more fun to race against the little fish (and beat them) than to race against the big fish and just go for your own personal time. I must confess that, after my "victory" today, I conjured up some evil thoughts of beating some people back in Kona. Well, I guess if I continue to improve, the chances of my beating some of them will increase, although I just want to concentrate on beating my personal best and not someone else's.


So besides the swimming and biking today, my training during the rest of the day will include consistent eating. I ate some potatoes last night and did not feel so hungry as in previous days at the end of my swim. I hope one day I can be a real swimmer/triathlete.

Miranda Carfrae wins St. Croix, Bree Wee third (first for USA)

The St. Croix 70.3 triathlon has just ended for the top professional ladies. Miranda Carfrae the 2006 winner won. Nina Kraft was second, and Bree Wee was third and the first American to finish, in her first year as a pro. Bree holds the amateur Ironman Hawaii course record set in 2007 at 9 hours 47 minutes and some seconds. Bree Wee also won a prize for the best swim (she was second out of the water but Julie Dibens dropped out later in the race and so had to forfeit that prize).

Thinking More about Nutrition

Today (Sunday) I had my last swim of the week (only five this week) and since I covered 4,300 meters, that brought my total for the week to about 20,800 meters. This morning, I had 1 hour 40 minutes left when I got into the water. After about 1 hr and 5 mins I was at 3,000m, mostly just cruising freestyle. Then I got a lane to myself as luck would have it, and I rested a minute and swam 400m in 7m 13s. Maybe a little too relaxed. But I did feel hungry on it. So I rested another 90s or so and then swam 200m in 3m 19s. That was a better pace, but I still felt like I was on an empty tank of gas. Finally after 500m of controlled hand paddles, I did a slow motion 50m, and waited about 2 minutes until my friend challenged me to a race. This time I said I only wanted to do 50m. The lifeguard timed us and started us off. I just tried to throw my hands forward as fast as I could. The lifeguard claimed I did it in 40 secs (against 39 for the other guy). So at least that was a good way to finish. I biked a little (about 3 miles) before I got home, but I got home fairly quickly so that I could eat breakfast.
I hope that I can eat a little more and not just feel hungry a lot of the time. I think in the past I often ate in communal situations like in Hawaii where for anything relatively good (like a chicken burger or a jacket potato) they would have a sign "One per person". So I always felt bad about eating a lot more than the "average" person. So the little old ladies would eat "one per person" and since they had a very sedentary life would be almost twice their ideal bodyweight. However, I would eat often having swum about 1.5 miles and biked about 35 miles, and so even though I would sometimes steal the extra jacket potato, I was usually mistaken for an anorexic.
The friend whose house my son and I stayed with yesterday who is into bodybuilding big time (even getting his coach faxing him his workouts and having umpteen containers of protein powder shipped to him from the US), appeared to eat about 10 meals a day. A snack for him sounded like a reasonably big meal for me. Anyway, I don't want to get big. Just I don't want to always feel like I am swimming without any fuel in the tank.
Tonight (in Taiwan) is the big night to tune into the St. Croix Triathlon. I hope there are good live updates.

Not really a Post

This is not really a post as I was in Taichung last night and all morning as our younger son had an exam there. So no swimming. However, I did learn something from the friend I stayed with. Basically, I need to eat more if I am to benefit from all the meters of swimming I am putting in. I found that I could go out to swim early in the morning and often not eat anything until quite late in the morning and often skimp on meals. I don't seem to constantly think of food and always have plenty of other things to do to keep me busy. However, the swimming often makes me tired later in the day and I don't tend to get very much work done. I don't want to start spending huge amounts of money on special kinds of food, but at least I will make an effort to eat more of the cheap kinds of food so I can benefit more from the training.
I plan to swim tomorrow (Sunday) morning, and then in the evening (Taiwan time) I will turn into the live radio coverage of the St. Croix 1/2 Ironman. I hope they say "Bree! Bree! Bree!"

Easy and Comfortable 4,500 meters!

The Indoor Swimming Pool Complex where I am currently able to swim six days a week. The red numbers on the screen on the left (you can click on the picture to enlarge it) are various air pollution measures that the government publicizes as part of its "good corporate citizen" policy. They are all within acceptable limits. The main polluters in this city appear to be the motor scooters, smokers and the people who regularly burn fake money.

Well, I am glad I can actually say I enjoyed swimming 4,500 meters today. I got off to an earlier start (by 6:15 am in the water) and the first 1,000 felt very smooth and comfortable. I did not pause much until I reached 2,000m. Then I got on deck thinking I would change lanes, but decided to stay where I was for the time being. Eventually, at 4,000m I had a lane to myself. So after resting nearly a minute, I swam 200m in 3m26s, only really trying to push on the last 50m. Then I kicked 100. After about another minute or two, three of us raced over 100m. I tied for second, in about 1m 33s. My weakness in the past has been that I cannot go very fast. So this is something I need to work on if I an going to maintain a faster pace over a long distance. I did a 100m cool down to finish and then I had to get out of the pool as it was 8:00 am and they were closing.
This afternoon I will accompany our younger son to Taichung (2.5 hours away by bus/coach) as he has an important exam tomorrow morning, and one he has worked very hard for these last two months. I really hope it goes well for him. He certainly has put in the effort, and it is not like just hoping he will be lucky.
It is amazing how things tend to play a very important part of our lives. It may be a university course, or just training for some race, or this exam for my son, or my goal to try to get my time down to six minutes. In some ways for me, my training just stops there. I still have to make a living, and I am too old to consider making one as a triathlete.
At the top of today's blog entry is a picture of the swimming pool where I go, from the outside. The pool is 25m long and there is a separate jacuzzi and also sauna and steam rooms. So it is this building that appears to be running my life (at least my early mornings) at present, as I log in the distances and dream of maybe achieving something significant in the future.

A More Tired 4,050 Meters & Goal Setting

The huge artificial mountain across the freeway is the trash incinerator where much of the city of Kaohsiung's trash gets burned. It is just across the busy freeway from the swimming pool, and is the reason why the pool is almost free to nearby residents. The thought of a big incinerator is not so nice, but what would happen if we did not have it? Would garbage just pile up by the roadside?

Today, I got in the water at 6:30 which left me an hour and a half before the pool closed. I basically just swam and swam and had very few rests, although at one point I did some 50s on one minute, although I barely made the send-offs. While I felt I swam OK, I was somewhat lethargic, and did not really have any speed, and my stroke felt a little sluggish. However, it was still 4,050 meters and nearly all freestyle. Maybe one should expect to get tired swimming 12k in just three days, at least at my age.
With my fellow blogging friends aiming to win international professional triathlon competitions, I thought about my own goals. What should I try to achieve, and how should I get there?
My goal is to be able to swim the Peaman 1/2 mile swim in a race in under 15 minutes, and/or to swim the King's Swim distance (1.2 miles) at Kailua pier in under 30 minutes. A few years back, my best times were 15m 19s (in a Peaman race) and 31m 05s in the Peaman Post-Pigout Plunge, which was effectively the same distance as the King's Swim.
To cut a long story short and without going into the mathematical calculations here, to be capable of these desired times, I need to be able to get my 400m pool swim time down from the current 7 minutes flat to 6 minutes flat. This is based on my times in the pool in Kona versus my concurrent times in the ocean in Kailua Bay.
To get down to 6 minutes for 400m, I need not only to wear a better swimsuit, do various stretching and upper body strengthening exercises, and learn to flip-turn better, but I need to swim 15k to 20k a week for most weeks over the next year, and at least towards the end of the workouts to push myself a bit. Of course, I need to constantly pay attention to technique so that I hopefully learn to swim better and not just try to do it by brute force.
My goal is to try to spend some time in Kona in Summer 2009 when there are several big swims on. I cannot make any very definite plans at the moment, as it all depends on whatever else is going on in my family. However, train I will, and at some point I will make the trip over there and try to see where I am at. I also have to accept the fact that I might do all this training but not reach my desired goals. However, unless I have a go, I won't know if I can make it or not.
Anyway, while the summer here in Taiwan might make swimming more difficult (as the pool will be packed), as fall and winter come, from what I know the pool should be relatively empty and so I should be able to continue to work at it during those months when maybe many people are just not doing anything.
Tomorrow, Friday, I will try to get an early start, as I will be out of town Saturday with one son who is taking an exam and will miss the swim on that day. Maybe the rest will do me good.

Less than five minutes by bike from the huge incinerator, people choose to incinerate their own trash themselves. So what would otherwise be a nice ride past rice fields is turned into having to occasionally breathe clouds of dioxins and other poisonous gases. I should send this to the EPA. This is perhaps a typical example of life in the Third World. Poor people who can barely afford to eat in turn help increase global warming (and possibly destroy the rice crop). We have to do something about it.