4,200 meters and Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day Breakfast: Hsiu-chin, Bruce, Morrison and James celebrate in our home with pancake, fried bananas, sausages and other delicacies all prepared by James.
This morning I got to the pool about 6:15 am, and swam comfortably (no shoulder pain), but generally slower. I tried what was to be an almost moderate 200m early in on, but my pace was barely what I would normally be doing 1,000m. So today was a little sluggish, but I clocked up the laps and did quite a lot of flip turns, some better than others. At least I am getting a little less fearful of banging my head on the wall. At the end of the swim, my friend challenged me to a 100m race, but I clearly could not really move, and he beat me by about half a length. I guess my arms just felt a little tired. According to my calculations, I swam 28,100 meters in the last six days (tomorrow will be my day off due to the pool's closure).
After about two months of swimming, I feel and maybe look a little stronger. Today, in spite of feeling a little tired from training, I felt really good. I know if I had more time to indulge in training, I could do more like bike and perhaps run, but I have noticed that I have not been so serious about my work in recent weeks and my income has dropped. At least I suffered from workaholism before, so a bit of triaholism will probably do me some good.
I have also spent time reading more people's blogs in recent days and weeks. Unfortunately, I don't know many people of my generation who have blogs that I can read, and so I have looked at a lot of blogs of people almost half my age. With all the pics and stories of what triathletes have been doing thousands of miles away I have often wondered where my reality is in life. I guess some of the people on whose blogs I have commented have also wondered who this old guy is who keeps looking at their blogs. So, to introduce myself a little more, here is a picture of me and my family. Our two sons prepared a sumptuous breakfast for my wife, Hsiu-Chin, for Mother's Day, which we ate in the kitchen of our new home. This is the reality of life for me, despite my believing that anime is real and that achieving some elusive goal as a triathlete is real, too. And, for the many mothers, who are also triathletes, housewives, career women and the rest of it, let me thank you all for being the extraordinary people you are. My life is basically very simple. I just swim, eat, do some work and rest, blog a little, and that's all.

Saturday: Long Swim (5,700 meters)

One of the traditional buildings one sees biking around Cheng Ching Lake. The red color, which is popular for this style of building, enables the building to stand out when surrounded by trees and a lot of greenery.
This wasn't expected. On Saturdays I usually get to the pool at 9:00 am, since it is also open then besides during the early morning and there are quite a lot less people at the second session. Coming later I can also stay until 11:30 am, and so it does not feel so rushed as in the early mornings.
I started off with 4x500m on 10 minute (or slightly more) send offs, where I mostly focused on technique and smoothness, paying particular attention to the catch and final push with my right arm, where I need to develop a more fluid and consistent stroke. Then I did 4x250m, with nothing particularly fast. At around this time there were about three other people in the lane and so I had to adjust my speed at times. Then I went back to easy, slower swimming, but from 4,000m on I tend to do 100m at a time with rests in between and with flip-turns at least half of the time. I reached 5,000m after I had been in the water just over 1 hr 50 mins. Then I went to the jacuzzi where I massaged my shoulders and triceps for nearly 10 minutes. That felt so good. After that I put on my hand paddles, and did 500m of slow and controlled freestyle. trying to achieve balance between my left and right arms. I finished with 200m of easy to moderate freestyle. The lifeguards were getting ready to close the pool, and so I called it a day.
Given that I have done quite a lot of swimming this week and had earlier in the week been a little sore in my right shoulder, I focused on smoothness and efficiency. After all, if I were to run, I would not deliberately bang my feet hard on the road, but gently. I am not a youngster anymore (although I often feel like one when swimming).
In the middle of next week, I will need to travel in Taiwan a bit (our son has an exam in Taichung and I need to go up to Taipei after that), and so I will miss a couple of swims at least. So I will just make the most of it when I can.
The weather here in Kaohsiung is pretty hot. 88F (31C) in my upstairs office even at 6 am. We need AC at night. The swimming pool, being indoor, may be sheltered from the sun's rays, but the air is humid and hot, and so after a hard swim one feels like one is in a sauna.
This Sunday on Mother's Day, there is the Peaman Mother's Day biathlon. I will be missing it for the first time since 2001. A great race and great fun and one I would certainly train for if I could do it.

A More Normal Swim Workout (4,350m)

The northeast portion of Cheng Ching Lake. Biking takes place along the road to the right of this picture. One can also run along the road, or else run along the trails on the other side of the lake provided one gets through the park entrance before 6:00am. Our home is less than two miles to the left of the Chinese tower perched on the horizon as the crow files. I can also reach the place where I took this photo within about 15 minutes by bike from our home.
One reads of people who get addicted to triathlon or just training of some sort, and while it is not very clear what this actually means, yesterday I certainly came close to it as by lunchtime I had done nothing but train, eat breakfast, and write my blog. Should I not be doing something more important with my life?
Yesterday ended up with my having to finish a job for a client and so I did not get to bed until 11:30pm, which is relatively late if you plan on getting up around 5:30am. Anyway, I was in the water at the pool at 6:22am, and swimming conditions were relatively good most of the time. Maybe I look a little intimidating and so perhaps fewer people join my lane. I don't know. While I tend to swim faster than most here, I don't splash as much as several others, preferring to apply force under the water and not before my hands enter it.
So the first 1,000m was fairly steady and reasonably paced, and then the next 700m or so was slower. After that, a relatively consistent freestyler entered my lane and I had to work pretty hard just to make only very slight gains on him. When I got to 2,500m, he was more a less done, or was at least resting every couple of lengths or so.
Today I had planned to do more speed work and so I did two 250m leaving on 5 mins at a moderate pace (4m 30s, 4m 20s), then a little very easy swimming and then some 50s, slow then fast, slow then fast, etc. (fastest 44s). Then more easy swimming, then 2 x 150m moderate (about 2m 32s each), and some easy swimming until I reached 4,000 meters. Then into the jacuzzi for about one minute (until the water jets were switched off as they always are at 7:50am, then back to very slow motion swimming, and then the 100m race.
Today 4 of us raced, and while I felt a bit stronger and better prepared today, I was still no match for my friend. He went about 1:26, then me 1:29 or 1:30 and our friend who was still several strokes behind and timed himself at 1:33. So improvements are coming to me slowly, inch by inch as it were. "HY, here I come, boy!"
I did minimal biking this morning, although it was another great morning for it, with sunshine, hot weather and a breeze. Just as every kid in Taiwan needs to study rather than do exercise or have fun, I also need to get on with my work. Fortunately, I still have work I can do.

Swimming and then the Bike Course

This morning I entered the water at the pool at 6:15 am. The first 1,000m I swam reasonably solidly, but for a while after that due to several people in the lane and a loss of focus plus my shoulder feeling a little sore I just swam easy until 2,000m. Then after a minute or two in the jacuzzi (to massage my shoulder), I came back and did 4 x 500m "light moderate" going faster with each one so the times ranged from 9m 25s on the first one to 8m 53s on the last one. While I tried to relax a little after that by kicking easy, etc. when the 100 m race came I found I was pretty tired and I finished a distant second equal in about 1m 32s. I finished off with a little relaxed swimming for a total distance of 4,500 meters. The fact that I had little left at the end meant that it must have been a pretty good workout. About 15 minutes later after showering and drinking my "Ensure", I was on my bike.
Today's bike ride was more of a picture taking trip. The weather was sunny, but clouds were building up and visibility was not as good as yesterday. After about 10 mins of biking (going by the Golden Lion Like, across the freeway and round the back of the huge trash incinerator, I passed the graveyards and rice paddies (see the above photo), as well as a mix of corrugated factories and elevated roads in the distance. More "ghetto", but at least quiet. I then reached a bigger road, climbed a small steep hill and a little further on turned down a road with a golf course to the right. Then more windy and hilly roads (but not much traffic at this time), until I got on to a bike path.
While this bike path (on the right) was not very long, it did provide plenty of shade. To the right of this path there is a busy four-lane road that connects Kaohsiung with some of the suburbs and there is a hospital, a college and a baseball stadium nearby (fortunately all on the other side of the road). After riding on a fairly narrow sidewalk for several hundred yards further on, for which you really need the mountain bike and have to go slowly as it is narrow, I reached the bottom part of the Cheng Ching Lake (pictured below). On a clear day with good visibility, this is the breathtaking view I referred to yesterday.


The bike I am riding has an aluminum frame and three chain rings on the front, which are usually necessary. Often the hills are not very big round here, but they are often steep. By riding such a bike, I am not going to get any fast times, but I trust by regularly pedaling, I won't be incapable of riding a real bike should I get to visit Kona.



To the right (about half way up the east side of the lake), one can clearly see the little Fu Kuo Island with the suspension bridge that I wrote about last month. It is certainly nice climbing a longish hill on a bike and getting to see so much water. Since it takes me about 20 minutes to bike one loop of the lake (in clockwise fashion), to run one loop would probably be four to five miles. It is quite doable if I am up to it. I would then bike to some place by the lake, lock the bike up and then run round once. Still, I will leave that until later, as swimming is already taking up a lot of my time.

Finally, after a longish and picturesque uphill climb passing about a mile of the lake to the left, and again with some shade from the trees in places, the road levels out, and after a couple more minutes or so I reenter the road with the rice paddies and tombstones. To the left is a traditional Chinese house. In fact it does not consist of just one building but at least three, arranged in a kind of inverted "u" shape. In an earthquake, you at least have more of a chance of getting out of one of these.

From this Chinese house, the little lane leads back around the trash incinerator, then to a bridge across the freeway, then a few minutes later I am back home. The whole ride, from pool to past the rice paddies to around the big lake (counter-clockwise) and then back home probably needs about 50 mins. If you go clockwise around the lake you can save at least 5 minutes by staying on the roads and usually only having to turn right. The distance can be increased by adding loops or riding along the trails within the Golden Lion Lake which one passes in both directions.

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).