Training Log – Week 43 (2018)

Screen Shot 2018-10-29 at 10.37.28

This was an easy training week, which was for the best. Mid-week, my work got very intense and had a couple of nights of sleeping at 2.30am. So, I moved rest days around to give me at least a bit of sleep on those days.

This week, I focussed on: (1) recovering from the Achilles pain that had started to bother me towards the end of the last week – likely because my run intensity and load has increased (2) testing my FTP so that I train on the bike at the right intensity.

With only two runs (and a gap of a couple of days before and after each of them), my Achilles seems to be doing better. I’ll only really know this week though, as my running frequency picks back up. Also, a bit of a cheat – I moved my only swim for the week to Monday and made it a ‘recovery swim’. This was because I couldn’t squeeze it into the week. But from the coming week, I need to make sure I get the swim(s) in the right time of the week.

I was a lot less diligent about tracking my caloric intake. But on the days I did, it did help me keep track of what I was eating. And I continued to be conscious of the little things I was doing through the day that all added up to quite some (junk) calories. I’ll get back to tracking this week.

The training block continues this week. 2 weeks to Hyderabad Triathlon (Olympic distance) which I intend to use purely as a hard training session. I’ll see how well I can do a 10k run on tired legs (ROTB). And it’s been a while since I did a 1500m straight swim, so that’ll help as well.

Posted on by Harish Sub 0

Training Log – Week 42 (2018)

Screen Shot 2018-10-22 at 07.32.39

Another green week! It was harder to maintain the streak early this week, as I overslept on Tuesday morning, and had a couple of two-a-days. But a holiday on Friday allowed me to make it all up.

Ankle and lower calf started to hurt after a somewhat high intensity run on Wednesday. Had to nurse it through the week by (1) massaging the Achilles myself (2) some foam rolling (3) lots of heel and calf stretches on the edge of a step. A rest day and a swim session coming up early in the coming week – so hopefully the rest and some more stretching will help me get back to normal.

I successfully tracked a lot of my food intake this week using myfitnesspal. I don’t trust that it’s very accurate, but like a weighing scale, I think it allows me to compare one day with another. Since I’ve been aware of the need to log it, I’ve also been more conscious of my food intake through the day. Even so, the odd meal out and some mindless eating result in huge spikes.

Screen Shot 2018-10-22 at 07.49.31.png

It’s also really driven home the point that the calories I burn as part of my training are the only reason I can stay in reasonable shape despite the caloric spikes. Of course, this also explains the rate at which I put on weight (and girth!) when I stop my training even for a few weeks – like when I broke my collarbone earlier or the vacation in Aug/Sep.

The week ahead is a recovery week, so I’ll focus on:

  1. Resting, stretching and eliminating the pain in my leg
  2. Doing a 20 min FTP test on the bike
  3. Continuing to track my food intake to see if I can stabilize it

On to week 4.

Posted on by Harish Sub 0

Training Log – Week 41 (2018)

Screen Shot 2018-10-15 at 12.20.28

Week 2 didn’t start very well – had a cold (sneezes, runny nose… the works). So, I took a day and a half off to try to recover quickly and not let it linger. Given that I needed to travel for work, and this is early in the training block, I didn’t want a sustained, low-grade malaise bothering me. And it seemed to work well. By Wednesday afternoon, I felt better and I finished the second half of the week strong.

The training is still pretty light, and while the runs are a little harder I am actually looking forward to a harder overall load. I’m tweaking little things on my run (and run prep) and what I’ve seen this week is that:

  1. Not eating anything before the run that could give me a heartburn is proving to be effective. Even when I do runs a bit later in the morning (10am, 28 deg C), I didn’t have any heartburn and didn’t feel out-of-breath.
  2. I’ve typically never used any race nutrition while training. This week, I actually used some Gu Chomps before my ROTB and Sunday run and felt strong. Not sure if the two are related in any way, but I’ll try it some more and report.
  3. I missed my only swim for the week, and am a little worried that I’m losing touch with my weakest discipline. I’ll see how this week’s swim feels.
  4. The rides were actually quite comfortable, and didn’t feel like I was being pushed. I’ll try to do an FTP test this week and see how I match up to a few months ago.
  5. Doing a relatively easy trainer ride on Saturday meant that I was much fresher for the ROTB and could match the planned pace. Last week, I pushed a little harder on the bike and the run felt much harder (heavy legs!)

My #1 focus for this week is on what I eat. I have a strong suspicion that it is the biggest thing holding back my fitness, training and overall health. All the training won’t help if I eat poorly. This week, I’ll monitor my intake, and mainly watch my snacking.

On to Week 3.

Posted on by Harish Sub 0

Training Log – Week 40 (2018)

Screen Shot 2018-10-08 at 08.23.01

New month. Start of a new block of training. Run-focused block with the aim of dropping my time for the run, and being able to run a 4:30 – 4:40/km half marathon. If this is achieved, then hopefully a HM time of 1:45 within a 70.3 tri will be achievable.

It’s always nice to see all green on TP. Of course, this was week 1 after a bit of a break, and I wasn’t traveling. So it’ll be much harder in the coming weeks when the training load picks up, and work/travel start to get in the way much more. But for now, I’ll take this good start.

A few things I learned:
1. Running late in the day (even if my last meal was a few hours ago) tends to give me a heartburn. This probably has more to do with what I’m doing than the time of the day. Also, the motivation needed to get out of the door for an evening run is much, much higher.
2. The tiny brick session (just a 70 min indoor ride followed by a 5km run) was surprisingly hard – because it’s been nearly 2 months since I did such a session. Also, the difference between a straightforward (just turning the legs over) run off the bike and a reasonable tempo run is quite stark.
3. An evening ride followed by a tempo run in the morning is not that easy. It’s probably good to simulate some tired legs, but I definitely hadn’t recovered enough. This likely also means that my overall fitness is low. As I get fitter, I’m hoping my recovery time will also get better.
4. I’ll have to work on dropping some of my excess weight if I have to get better at the run.

On to week 2.

Posted on by Harish Sub 0

Disappointment

This August, for the first time in nearly a decade of running and triathlon events, I did not finish (DNF). In February, I crashed at a local mountain bike race on Lap 1 of 5. Even there, I got up and finished – and only later realized that I had broken a collarbone.  But at an IM 70.3 race in the Sunshine Coast in Australia, I couldn’t quite deal with stormy weather and choppy waters to finish the swim event within the cutoff time. I was allowed an hour to complete the swim, and being disoriented from the swells, I doggy-paddled and breast-stroked and held on to the support crew’s paddleboards… and took nearly 1.20. So, not even close, really.

Now I’m not going to pretend that this is a defining moment in my life. It was just poor preparation – a pool never really simulates an ocean swim, and bad luck (I’d been sick the week of the race, and this was the first and only rainy day in the sunshine coast that month!). And after a couple of days of disappointment, I got over it. But I was really upset about the fact that I had spent a boatload of money, taken the trouble to lug my bike all the way to Australia, and then failed spectacularly after all that build up.

The race post-mortem led me to a conclusion. I need to infuse a little more structure and reflection into my training. So, I plan to post periodic updates about my training here. While Training Peaks does a fine job of tracking my progress and relaying that to my coach, I hope to look back on every week, add some commentary and think ahead a little bit.

As I write this, I’m starting a roughly 11-week run-focussed training block. So, it’s as good a week as any to start.

Upcoming Events: 
Jan 2019: Goa Triathlon
Feb 2019: Colombo 70.3

 

 

Posted on by Harish Sub 0

Drawing to remember

I am a visual person, and I remember best when I have drawn something to remember a concept by. Graham Shaw is brilliant at equipping you with a toolkit to do this.

A common term for this kind of a diagram is a sketchnote. It’s used very often in conferences. Here is (what looks to be) a good workbook to become proficient at sketchnoting.

 

Posted on by Harish Sub 0

DYI MDes – Term 1

Jan – March 2018

Courses that I will take (build):

  1. Model Thinking (Coursera and supporting material)
  2. Interaction Design (Sources: Coursera, IDF, Books, Blogs, Project)
  3. Design of everyday things (Sources: Industrial design course, Design history books, Project)

Wishlist:

  1. Design through storytelling (Sources: Ideo, Book, Project)
  2. Basic elements of Graphic Design – Typography, Layout, Structure, Styles (Sources: MOOC, Books, Blogs, Projects)
  3. Open-source design (Sources: Blogs, Project)

 

Posted on by Harish Sub 0

My DIY Masters in Design

Designers of every generation seem to have met with the same principal challenge at least once in their lifetime. And that is making a new technology more intuitive and ‘for the masses’. What I find intriguing is how this is going to play out over the next decade in the fields of AI, VR, customized medicine, efficient power generation & storage, and so on. Early in the life of most new advancements, it is embraced – warts and all – by enthusiastic supporters. But it takes deliberate experimentation and some missteps for it to be usable, intuitive and adaptable. I am interested in learning more about all aspects of this process.

I would dearly have loved to have taken a few years off and spent time with a host of experts in academia, research, and industry – to study these topics. But that takes a lot of money, and the process is quite tedious. Moreover, I am increasingly of the opinion that crafting your own learning journey has a lot of merit. You learn as much from the mistakes and dead-ends as you do from the wondrous new avenues.

Perhaps I can create just such a program for myself. I need to know what to learn, what to read, what to attempt (problems and projects), and who to learn from. Here, I will curate this set of resources and document my process. Along the way, I will also write down what worked and what didn’t.

Posted on by Harish Sub 0

Screen time for kids

We have a toddler who just won’t eat dinner without her favourite videos played on a small screen. We’re at once appalled by this development, and amazed that she knows how to skip ads, swat away notifications, and find the most pertinent videos all by herself.

This talk provides some solace, and challenges us to look at this (inevitable) development through the lens of interactivity, augmented learning and cognitive advancement.

 

Posted on by Harish Sub 0

Originality

In moments of quiet desperation, I create alternate realities. These are worlds in which I am doing something creative, being more playful, building things that are more fun. And in each such moment, I wonder why some of my more outlandish ideas are never entertained by the people I work with. I think it’s got to do with the world being divided into people who get satisfaction from checklists and incremental improvement, and those who are excited about producing a dizzying array of whimsical ideas. I suspect I fall in the latter camp.

What makes people original? What do original people do? What do they believe? How do they work? The formula seems to be hiding in plain sight:

  1. Original ideas come from having lots of ideas.
  2. Originality comes with lots of doubt.
  3. Randomness (I interpret this as play) is crucial to originality.
  4. Originality comes from having constraints.

This series of talks capture a lot of these points. And Shimpei Takahashi, in particular, is delightfully funny.

 

 

 

 

Posted on by Harish Sub 0