It has been said that 10,000 hours are required to become an expert. In anything. I calculated this out: if you practice something 1 hour/day, it would take 27 years to reach 10,000 hours... assuming that's 1 hour/day every single day for 27 years. Of course, if you practice 3 hours/day, that's only 9 years. Still, that's pretty daunting considering that would be 3 hours daily for 365 days/year for 9 years.
Why do I bring this up? When I was growing up, I started playing the piano at age 6. I took lessons until I was 18. At that point, the growth in my piano skills stopped. Most people consider me pretty proficient in piano. And I can sight-read relatively well, which means I can fake my way through a lot of things. But I'm nowhere near 10,000 hours, probably closer to 60-70% of that.
I've been told that I'm a pretty good cyclist. In years past, I was better, but I no longer put the time in that I did previously. Again, nowhere near 10,000 hours. Same with running. At one point in time in my distant past, I was a decent amateur runner. Even at my peak, though, I was nowhere close to 10,000 hours. Now, I'm closer to that number than when I was decent, and I'm a whole lot slower than I was back then.
And now the reason that I mention this: swimming. 10,000 hours is a lot of time to put in to become an expert. I've been swimming relatively consistently for, say 17 years, but the amount of time is not even close to 10,000 hours. I keep reading about how you can get faster by swimming less, but of better quality, but the truth of the matter is, you need to put the time in. I watch my son's age group club swimmers and they don't worry that much about their technique; they just swim. And they all get faster. For most of them, they've got a long ways to go to get to 10,000 hours, and they can't give describe to you how to swim faster, but they just do. So, the idea that less can be more to me is, frankly, ridiculous.
There are sayings that basically describe this: time in the water, time in the saddle, time on your feet. 10,000 hours is a lot of time. But that's what it takes.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
If you could cheat... would you?
Here's the thing: there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. It's black and white, and there are no shades of gray. If you cheat and you get away with it, are you as satisfied as if you hadn't cheated? Why am I mentioning this? Well, besides the obvious discussions that have been ongoing with the amount of doping (= cheating) in sports, there was recently a local development that was of interest to me.
There was a fellow triathlete that I was casually acquainted with who is now headed to prison for defrauding one of his clients. It was an amount that was pretty substantial, and allowed this triathlete to live pretty well for a few years. But he got caught. And now there has been some speculation that, if his morals allowed him to do this, how much of a stretch would it have been to his morals to use PED's to improve his athletic performance? Certainly, he was able to afford it. Obviously, in the big picture, this is a minor issue, but it does cause me to ask the bigger question: how many people cross the line? And is it worth it?
From minor offenses such as drafting, which may be accidental, to major, blatant cheating, there is a continuum of cheating. Certainly, in a drafting call where the person in front of you slows down and you are unable to get through the box in 15 seconds, I am less judgmental. Or, if you are on an open road, and a car (or semi) blows by you, there is an unavoidable draft that you are catching (the press truck in the early Ironman Hawaii races was legendary for providing a big draft to the race leader). Those, to me, are not major issues, and are often unintentional. I guess that's the tipping point for me: intention. If the attempt is to intentionally get an edge by skirting the rules, I don't have a lot of tolerance. Does that mean that I don't try to get every edge that I can? Absolutely not. Certainly, I'll try to do what I can to get the most out of myself and my equipment. But, I tend to base my decisions on intent, rather than the "letter of the law." For instance, blood doping wasn't illegal in 1984, but does anybody really think this was okay to do for the Olympics? And I've always found it somewhat amusing that Lance Armstrong has always said that he has have never tested positive for a banned substance, rather than that he has not taken any PED's. I guess I don't subscribe to the old adage, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."
The funny thing is that even though a lot of endurance athletes make fun of a sport like golf, it is actually one of the sporting (IMO) of all sports. Golfers call penalties on themselves, even if nobody else has seen the violation. What other sport does that?
There was a fellow triathlete that I was casually acquainted with who is now headed to prison for defrauding one of his clients. It was an amount that was pretty substantial, and allowed this triathlete to live pretty well for a few years. But he got caught. And now there has been some speculation that, if his morals allowed him to do this, how much of a stretch would it have been to his morals to use PED's to improve his athletic performance? Certainly, he was able to afford it. Obviously, in the big picture, this is a minor issue, but it does cause me to ask the bigger question: how many people cross the line? And is it worth it?
From minor offenses such as drafting, which may be accidental, to major, blatant cheating, there is a continuum of cheating. Certainly, in a drafting call where the person in front of you slows down and you are unable to get through the box in 15 seconds, I am less judgmental. Or, if you are on an open road, and a car (or semi) blows by you, there is an unavoidable draft that you are catching (the press truck in the early Ironman Hawaii races was legendary for providing a big draft to the race leader). Those, to me, are not major issues, and are often unintentional. I guess that's the tipping point for me: intention. If the attempt is to intentionally get an edge by skirting the rules, I don't have a lot of tolerance. Does that mean that I don't try to get every edge that I can? Absolutely not. Certainly, I'll try to do what I can to get the most out of myself and my equipment. But, I tend to base my decisions on intent, rather than the "letter of the law." For instance, blood doping wasn't illegal in 1984, but does anybody really think this was okay to do for the Olympics? And I've always found it somewhat amusing that Lance Armstrong has always said that he has have never tested positive for a banned substance, rather than that he has not taken any PED's. I guess I don't subscribe to the old adage, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."
The funny thing is that even though a lot of endurance athletes make fun of a sport like golf, it is actually one of the sporting (IMO) of all sports. Golfers call penalties on themselves, even if nobody else has seen the violation. What other sport does that?
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Beware the low-hanging fruit!
In the academic world, low-hanging fruit is a metaphor for the easiest targets to grab. Whether it's for grants, sturyding, or residencies, the low-hanging fruit is the stuff that we grab first before settling in for the longer tasks that are going to take more time. So, for example, when I grade papers, I will pick those that are the quickest to grade, so I can get feel like I've accomplished something.
Yesterday, I found out about the dangers of low-hanging fruit... literally.
It wasn't raining when I got home from work, and there was nobody home: no wifey, no kids, no dogs. I decided to go out for a run. Since it is now dark at 5:00 PM, I was going to wear something that could be seen by cars. I put on a black long-sleeved top. Okay, so not the best color choice, but I also put on a reflective belt, Nightlife gloves, and a headlamp. I used to think that the more reflective and bright clothing I wore, the more I was lighting myself up as a target for cars to aim at. But, since I was wearing a black shirt, I figured I needed a lot to be seen. My run was pretty uneventful for the first half. I saw a buck out on the road, and I think he was trying to decide if he needed to get out of the way for me. Whether it was me or the car that was approaching from the other direction, the buck decided to high-tail it for the other side of the road and safety beyond.
As I headed up Union for home, I decided to stay on the sidewalk. Now, if you are familiar with Steilacoom at all, there are places on Union where the sidewalk takes abrupt left and right jogs at seemingly random locations (although it probably has to do with trees in the planting strip). And, I haven't yet memorized those locations. So, one second I was running along the middle of the sidewalk, happily trotting along (it was a pretty good run), and the next second I was in the middle of the planting strip as the sidewalk had jogged left. And then... WHAM! Smacked right on the nose by an apple (the low-hanging fruit). Although it didn't hurt, the suddenness of getting whacked on the bridge of the nose by a solid, wet object in the dark was a bit startling. And since my headlamp beam is pointed at the ground so I can be on the lookout for things that I can step in or get tripped by, the apple was totally unexpected.
Since nothing was hurt, and all was well, it was good for a chuckle, though. And I realized that there was yet another danger to running in the dark!
Yesterday, I found out about the dangers of low-hanging fruit... literally.
It wasn't raining when I got home from work, and there was nobody home: no wifey, no kids, no dogs. I decided to go out for a run. Since it is now dark at 5:00 PM, I was going to wear something that could be seen by cars. I put on a black long-sleeved top. Okay, so not the best color choice, but I also put on a reflective belt, Nightlife gloves, and a headlamp. I used to think that the more reflective and bright clothing I wore, the more I was lighting myself up as a target for cars to aim at. But, since I was wearing a black shirt, I figured I needed a lot to be seen. My run was pretty uneventful for the first half. I saw a buck out on the road, and I think he was trying to decide if he needed to get out of the way for me. Whether it was me or the car that was approaching from the other direction, the buck decided to high-tail it for the other side of the road and safety beyond.
As I headed up Union for home, I decided to stay on the sidewalk. Now, if you are familiar with Steilacoom at all, there are places on Union where the sidewalk takes abrupt left and right jogs at seemingly random locations (although it probably has to do with trees in the planting strip). And, I haven't yet memorized those locations. So, one second I was running along the middle of the sidewalk, happily trotting along (it was a pretty good run), and the next second I was in the middle of the planting strip as the sidewalk had jogged left. And then... WHAM! Smacked right on the nose by an apple (the low-hanging fruit). Although it didn't hurt, the suddenness of getting whacked on the bridge of the nose by a solid, wet object in the dark was a bit startling. And since my headlamp beam is pointed at the ground so I can be on the lookout for things that I can step in or get tripped by, the apple was totally unexpected.
Since nothing was hurt, and all was well, it was good for a chuckle, though. And I realized that there was yet another danger to running in the dark!
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Don't get old if you can help it
It's Hell getting old. Maybe I should say "older," since, compared to most of my patients, I'm not really old. Some days, though, I definitely feel older than others. Take yesterday, for example. Following my plan of running less, but running faster, I headed out on the track for a ladder of 400, 600, 800, 1200, 800, 600, 400 all with a 400 RI. Because I was a bit busy in the morning, I didn't do this at Noon as I had planned, but ended up on the Steilacoom HS track at 5:00 PM in the dark. Which was okay. There were some benches and barriers on the track, but nothing that I would be running into, I hoped, even if it was pretty dark. It was nearly a full moon, but since the clouds were hiding it, there wasn't much light, except for the spotlight on the flag at the far end of the field. That, actually, looked pretty cool.
So, off I went on a 2 mile w/u. I was wearing my Newtons; I had thought about using racing flats, but hoped that I could still make the intervals easily wearing training flats. At the 1.5 mile mark, I did some 100 m strides, and didn't feel too bad. However, I did notice my left hip (more correctly, groin) was acting a bit unhappy. I had tweaked it during the Turkey Trot (see previous entry for the details), but it hadn't been too bothersome until now. Still, I didn't think it would be a problem.
As soon as I started the 400, I knew that my groin was a bigger problem than I expected. It got progressively more painful after the first 100. By the time I came around to the start/finish, I wondered if I would be able to continue the workout. I was having problems planting and pushing off and I definitely couldn't stride out on my left. To make things even more problematic, my watch was all messed up. So, while I think I made the interval (should have been 1:29), I couldn't tell. During my 400 recovery jog, I thought about my predicament. I decided to run the 600 and see what happened. I also thought that I fixed the problem with my watch. I hit the button to start the 600 and took off. Immediately, I realized that my leg was not going to let me finish the workout (at least at the intervals I wanted). I chopped my stride, ran the rest of the lap fairly gingerly and stopped at the 400. And it was over. To add insult to injury, when I looked at my watch to see what my first 400 time was, I couldn't get it to recall.
I guess I'm not running for a little while. I missed my target of 100K for the month, but that's not a huge deal; it was just a motivator. I'm going to see if I can still ride and swim. Right now, I'm walking kind of like I just got off a horse. Seems that things like this never used to happen to me 20 years ago, when I was younger and faster.
So, off I went on a 2 mile w/u. I was wearing my Newtons; I had thought about using racing flats, but hoped that I could still make the intervals easily wearing training flats. At the 1.5 mile mark, I did some 100 m strides, and didn't feel too bad. However, I did notice my left hip (more correctly, groin) was acting a bit unhappy. I had tweaked it during the Turkey Trot (see previous entry for the details), but it hadn't been too bothersome until now. Still, I didn't think it would be a problem.
As soon as I started the 400, I knew that my groin was a bigger problem than I expected. It got progressively more painful after the first 100. By the time I came around to the start/finish, I wondered if I would be able to continue the workout. I was having problems planting and pushing off and I definitely couldn't stride out on my left. To make things even more problematic, my watch was all messed up. So, while I think I made the interval (should have been 1:29), I couldn't tell. During my 400 recovery jog, I thought about my predicament. I decided to run the 600 and see what happened. I also thought that I fixed the problem with my watch. I hit the button to start the 600 and took off. Immediately, I realized that my leg was not going to let me finish the workout (at least at the intervals I wanted). I chopped my stride, ran the rest of the lap fairly gingerly and stopped at the 400. And it was over. To add insult to injury, when I looked at my watch to see what my first 400 time was, I couldn't get it to recall.
I guess I'm not running for a little while. I missed my target of 100K for the month, but that's not a huge deal; it was just a motivator. I'm going to see if I can still ride and swim. Right now, I'm walking kind of like I just got off a horse. Seems that things like this never used to happen to me 20 years ago, when I was younger and faster.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Not having a clue
I ran a Thanksgiving Turkey Trot the other day. The weather was as good as it gets for late November in the Pacific Northwest: cool, dry, and kind of sunny. Basically, I looked at the weather forecast, and when rain wasn't listed, I signed up the boys and me. While a 5K doesn't burn all that many calories, it helped to justify the binge eating that I was going to do later in the day. And besides, what else am I going to do on a holiday morning, right?
We made the trek to NE Tacoma for the Norpoint Turkey Trot. After picking up our shirts and numbers ($35 for a short sleeved one color white t-shirt for Ryan? Really?), we headed over with the McMonigal family. I warmed up briefly with David and JJ and took my place at the start, several rows behind the front, figuring all of the high schoolers in front of me were going to be going a lot faster than I was. My plan was to ease my way through the first mile, and pick it up. The gun went off (it was an actual cannon!) without a countdown, so we were all a bit surprised. As I got started, within the first 100 yards, some bozo went sprinting by me and cut me off, tripping me. I struggled to remain upright for about 20 yards, before finally losing my balance and falling, scraping my knee and elbow. I think somebody else went down behind me as well. I rolled over, got up and sprinted up to yell at the bozo who tripped me. As I caught and passed him, I yelled... well, let's just say that it wasn't "Have a nice day." So much for taking it easy. I ran the rest of the way without looking down at my knee, because I didn't want to see how badly it was scraped up. I did look at my elbow, and my long-sleeve top wasn't torn, so that was a good sign. I decided not to look at my watch for my splits; turns out my splits were pretty reasonable, given the topography of the course: 6:25, 6:17, 7:00. I probably seeded myself too far back, as I was only passed by two people and passed a bunch, finishing 18th overall and 2nd in my AG (40-49). Total time: 20:32.
I went back to find the boys, and David was moving right along, and finished in 24:xx. Ryan wasn't too far back at 30:xx. David was 4th in his AG and Ryan was 9th. Altogether, not too shabby a performance for the Ling family. As we were walking back home, my left hip started tightening up, and I realized that I probably tweaked it a bit during the fall. And yes, there was blood and some abrasions on my knee and some abrasions on my elbow, and there is a hole in the palm of one of my gloves.
So... since we're chip-timed, what was the point of the bozo sprinting ahead and tripping me? No idea, since he ended up finishing around 25-26 minutes. I guess I've never understood that. Why is it that people believe they're going to set a PR for their race by sprinting for the first 200 yards of a race and then dying and moving backwards through the field? Especially in a little po-dunk race, what's the point of it? It's not like they're going to be on TV. It's not like it will matter when they cross the start line, since everything is chip-timed now. Ah well, maybe the bozo that tripped me will have learned a lesson about seeding himself and starting more reasonably in the future. Or maybe I just need to get closer to the front...
We made the trek to NE Tacoma for the Norpoint Turkey Trot. After picking up our shirts and numbers ($35 for a short sleeved one color white t-shirt for Ryan? Really?), we headed over with the McMonigal family. I warmed up briefly with David and JJ and took my place at the start, several rows behind the front, figuring all of the high schoolers in front of me were going to be going a lot faster than I was. My plan was to ease my way through the first mile, and pick it up. The gun went off (it was an actual cannon!) without a countdown, so we were all a bit surprised. As I got started, within the first 100 yards, some bozo went sprinting by me and cut me off, tripping me. I struggled to remain upright for about 20 yards, before finally losing my balance and falling, scraping my knee and elbow. I think somebody else went down behind me as well. I rolled over, got up and sprinted up to yell at the bozo who tripped me. As I caught and passed him, I yelled... well, let's just say that it wasn't "Have a nice day." So much for taking it easy. I ran the rest of the way without looking down at my knee, because I didn't want to see how badly it was scraped up. I did look at my elbow, and my long-sleeve top wasn't torn, so that was a good sign. I decided not to look at my watch for my splits; turns out my splits were pretty reasonable, given the topography of the course: 6:25, 6:17, 7:00. I probably seeded myself too far back, as I was only passed by two people and passed a bunch, finishing 18th overall and 2nd in my AG (40-49). Total time: 20:32.
I went back to find the boys, and David was moving right along, and finished in 24:xx. Ryan wasn't too far back at 30:xx. David was 4th in his AG and Ryan was 9th. Altogether, not too shabby a performance for the Ling family. As we were walking back home, my left hip started tightening up, and I realized that I probably tweaked it a bit during the fall. And yes, there was blood and some abrasions on my knee and some abrasions on my elbow, and there is a hole in the palm of one of my gloves.
So... since we're chip-timed, what was the point of the bozo sprinting ahead and tripping me? No idea, since he ended up finishing around 25-26 minutes. I guess I've never understood that. Why is it that people believe they're going to set a PR for their race by sprinting for the first 200 yards of a race and then dying and moving backwards through the field? Especially in a little po-dunk race, what's the point of it? It's not like they're going to be on TV. It's not like it will matter when they cross the start line, since everything is chip-timed now. Ah well, maybe the bozo that tripped me will have learned a lesson about seeding himself and starting more reasonably in the future. Or maybe I just need to get closer to the front...
Thursday, November 15, 2012
I don't need a GPS; I need a sun dial
Well, there have been some interesting workouts lately that have me questioning the utility of all my high-tech gee whiz gadgets. First, I had to swim a 200 IM for time. Yep, that would be 3 out of 4 strokes that I don't do very well. I only got lapped once by a 13 year old. And David didn't really laugh at me when I finished... much. My second workout was my 5K time trial to establish my baseline workout times. This goes back to the Run Less, Run Faster protocol that I'm trying to follow. And it also goes to the Endurance Nation Outseason workouts. Both want 5K, although RLRF says that I can use 3 x 1600 with 1 minute rest (on the track). While I would have much preferred the 3 x 1600, I decided to time trial as I thought it would be a more accurate gauge. So last Saturday afternoon, I sucked it up and headed out. It was cool but sunny. I chose the flattest 5K out of a run to Fort Steilacoom park and back. This included nearly 1 mile of flat, paved, almost completely straight bike path that I ran out and back as well as some flat sidewalk before and after. I didn't even look at my Garmin, because I didn't want to know. When I got home and downloaded it, the truth was ugly. 21:13 for 5K, which comes out to 6:50/mile. If you would have told me even 5 years ago that I'd be working so hard to run so slow, I would have never believed you. And if you would have told me 20 years ago that I would ever be this slow, well...
I guess I have nowhere to go but up. Because I can't get any slower... can I?!
I guess I have nowhere to go but up. Because I can't get any slower... can I?!
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Just an 800
I had a fun swim yesterday. I'm swimming with David's swim team, and the coach creatively designs an individual workout for me. I'm still convinced that my swim coaches, past and present, set up IM and butterfly sets for me just for their amusement. I don't do butterfly... it's more of a bumblebee (if a bumblebee is not supposed to be able to fly due to its aerodynamics...). Anyway, after a 10 x 100 IM set, I had to sprint kick 25's. Now, the term "sprint kick" is an oxymoron in my world. And I was going to ask if I could use fins, but decided against it, since I knew the answer would be laughter and a "No." But I was actually excited that I was able to sprint kick a 25 between 22-25 seconds. Before any of you belittle that time, you have to understand that I was barely able to get forward propulsion when I first started kicking back when I was just starting to swim for triathlons.
So after doing a set of 25's my legs were a bit thrashed. And then the last part? Ashley said, "One last thing before you get out of the pool: swim an 800." Excuse me? I repeated that as a question. And yup, that was the answer. And so back and forth I went. And you know what? It didn't kill me; the lifeguards didn't have to save me; and I got it done. As I was finishing the last few laps, I thought that something like that is really good for me. Considering that a sprint tri is usually a 1/2 mile swim, it made me realize that I SHOULD be swimming faster during a race. After all, if I can swim an 800 at the end of a workout, swimming hard during a triathlon should be reasonable.
The funniest part of this was when I told my family about my workout while we were eating dinner. I guess some of David's teammates were complaining about having to finish their workout with 4 x 100. His response: "Would you rather do this or would you rather do what my Dad is doing? He has to swim an 800." I guess I might have earned a little bit of respect from his team yesterday.
So after doing a set of 25's my legs were a bit thrashed. And then the last part? Ashley said, "One last thing before you get out of the pool: swim an 800." Excuse me? I repeated that as a question. And yup, that was the answer. And so back and forth I went. And you know what? It didn't kill me; the lifeguards didn't have to save me; and I got it done. As I was finishing the last few laps, I thought that something like that is really good for me. Considering that a sprint tri is usually a 1/2 mile swim, it made me realize that I SHOULD be swimming faster during a race. After all, if I can swim an 800 at the end of a workout, swimming hard during a triathlon should be reasonable.
The funniest part of this was when I told my family about my workout while we were eating dinner. I guess some of David's teammates were complaining about having to finish their workout with 4 x 100. His response: "Would you rather do this or would you rather do what my Dad is doing? He has to swim an 800." I guess I might have earned a little bit of respect from his team yesterday.
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