Urban Brick

Downtown Atlanta is probably one of the least likely places to find an Xterra triathlete in training. As it turns out, I am stuck in the concrete jungle again all week on a business trip. Just as I did 3 weeks ago, I packed my road bike and rollers. I don’t normally elaborate on individual workouts. However today’s “urban brick” was worth talking about. My 19th floor hotel room balcony overlooks the busy hwy 85 interstate and Georgia Tech stadium right in the middle of downtown. I set up my rollers on the hotel balcony overlooking the downtown maze of madness. After warming up for 10 minutes, I cranked out a half hour effort averaging just under race pace heart rate (~155 bpm). I immediately swapped shoes and shorts and headed down to the 4th floor hotel fitness center for a 2 mile treadmill run at the same heart rate as the bike. Following the treadmill, I headed straight to the stairwell for “urban hill repeats”. I ran down to the 1st floor and ascended the stairs to the 25th floor. I repeated the stair routine four times, with an increase in effort each time (I was skipping every other step on the last round). I finished it off with 10 minutes of abs and 5 minutes of stretching back in my room.

Metabolism

This past Saturday, I spent the better part of the afternoon promoting Cahaba Cycles at Alabama Powerman. While at the Cahaba tent, I struck up a conversation with Kristy Harris of FitnessWave. The details are on their website, but they basically perform VO2 max testing, hydrostatic body composition testing, and metabolic rate testing. Despite my background in elite level swimming and engineering, I have never been a big “numbers” person when it comes to exercise. I just got my first HR monitor last year! However, I couldn’t help but gain curiosity when I saw them doing a metabolic test on a volunteer. In order to complete the test, you must first go at least four hours without eating or drinking anything other than water. Then, you sit down, put on a nose clip, and breathe into a tube attached to a machine that measures your resting metabolic rate (RMR). This represents the calories the body burns to maintain vital body functions (heart rate, brain function, breathing, and other essential activities). In simple terms, it is the number of calories a person would burn if awake, but resting all day. With an empty stomach, I completed the test and gained some insight into why so much of my family budget goes towards groceries. As I learned from the test, my body burns 2232 calories/day just maintaining vital functions. From this, they were able to estimate that I burn an additional 669 calories/day doing everyday chores (walking up stairs, brushing teeth, etc.) and 279 calories in a half hour of moderate exercise. It takes a VO2 max test to determine the exact calorie burn for different levels of exertion. However from these results it’s entirely reasonable to assume a 4000+ calorie typical day for my training schedule. Of course this number could easily be 50% to 75% higher on a big training day. For anyone trying to ensure they are getting the right amount of calories to stay fueled, or to gain, maintain, or decrease weight, a metabolic test is a great way to establish some baseline individualized data.

Russian Wild Boar Duathlon

If my first multisport race of the season is any indication of the remainder of the season, then I am expecting huge performance gains this year. I competed in the Russian Wild Boar Off-Road Duathlon today. As a part of the Brookside Greenway festival, it was held on the rain soaked Brookside Greenway and trail system. Despite the muddy conditions I racked up a first place overall finish. Going into the race, I didn’t really know what to expect. It was my first-ever duathlon, and a first time-event. As a first-time race, I must commend race director Mike Bryan for doing a fantastic job of making sure everything was organized, and well marked. Initially, the bike portion of the race included a river crossing. However, the rain last night caused the river level to rise to waist deep level. Fortunately the race organizers re-routed the bike portion to omit the river crossing. The final route included a 1.8 mile trail run, 10 mile mtb bike, and 1.8 mile trail run. In order to maximize participation, race officials aimed to limit the technical difficulty of the course. However, thanks to mother-nature, the extreme amount of mud made up for the lack of technical difficulty. Since it was my first duathlon, I started off conservatively. Knowing that I was able to run with the leaders without any signs of fatigue, I found a huge boost of confidence going into transition. Leaving transition on my bike, I was in the familiar last 2/3 of a triathlon territory. Still feeling strong, I laid the power down on the bike and managed to gap the field by over 4 minutes. At the start of the final run, my legs complained a little. However, thanks to the great conditioning work over the winter, I was able to mentally shut out that initial fatigue and increase my lead for a victorious finish. I’m really looking forward to the Xterra season!