ITB

I went to see an orthopedist today and he told me that I have ITB problem. Really?!? So far this ITB problem has been diagnosed by me (self-diagnosis), 2 American PTs and one Slovak orthopedist.

He told me that he would prescribe physical therapy and electric stimulation treatment. Unfortunately I am leaving on Wednesday so I cannot do it but I have already done both PT and electric stimulation treatment and although it might help to calm itb down and stop immflamation it does not prevent ITB to flare up again.
He prescribed some kind of anti-inflammatory powder to put into water and some kind of healing muscles/joints etc gel.

But that does not help me to get rid of it completely! I told him that I was told to do hip strengthening exercises but he said he did not recommend strengthening exercises but stretching streching streching.

He also ordered rontgen just to make sure there is nothing else in that knee. I am going to try to have that done tomorrow, but I will not have a doctor to look at it because this orthopedist does not work tomorrow.
I will try to have it burned on CD (if such a thing is possible in this funny middle-aged hospital) and then try to find a doctor to have a look at it.

I do not know anyone like that.
Don't you know anyone who can have a look? Just a little peak to see whether everything is ok.

1500m swim test (and bike pic)

It was quite horrible. I had no idea how to pace myself so I kept it on a safe side (surprise, surprise!!! I meant that iconically) and I end up with 26:15 in lcm (50m pool).

I could have kept going at that pace. Nothing hurt. Oh well, I will do better next time:)
I am such an unexperienced lousy sissy swimmer.

I washed the bike on Tuesday but then I did another bike ride on Wed and the bike was filthy (mud, salt etc) and since I am keeping it here my dad ordered me to wash it:)


But he had to cave in and let me do it in a bathroom:) Now the bike is like new. Ok, was like new because I went for a bike ride afterwards. But roads were dry so it is still pretty clean, although little "road dusty".

Moving preparations

Thankfully (or maybe not) I am not moving furniture and all similar crap so it is not a real move.
All I need is a bike, some run/bike/swim cloths, shoes and of course some work cloths and shoes.

A lot of things have happen in last 3 days. I have received an offer, booked a flight, signed work contract and signed apartment lease. Unfortuantely there is still quite a lot of unknown, but I will deal with that along the way (Mon and Tue since I am leaving on Wed morning). Contract is for 2 months, then we shall see what happens, hopefully I will have work visa or something like that by then.

One not-so-good thing is my apartment because it is on the other side of a city and it will take me probably one hour to get to work by train (or whatever it is they have in Hannover). But since company is paying for my apartment I am not complaining. Good thing though is that it is not in the centre, but rather on the edge of a city thus I can go biking very easily somewhere in the countryside (if Hannover has country side, but I suppose it does) and do not have to deal with city traffic.
Btw, I am not taking my TT bike (which my parents are thrilled about because right now it issitting in my room covered with mud and it will probably stay there). I am taking my old road bike (if you can call it that, I bought it in Walmart for $150 when I was in college). I still have not decided whether I should try to have the cassette changed so I have powermeter but I probably won't do it. I might sometimes use the bike to get to work and for getting around. Ok, I am leaving powertap at home for now:( I will train with HR.

But being a real athlete that I am, I already have researched some bike routes at bikemap.net. It seems that there is some kind of a cyclist living near me because there is quite a lot of routes uploaded by him. So that's cool, I should be able to get in some good biking with the help of those maps. Although I am not sure when since I will get home at 6pm and it will be dark already. I am not taking trainer with me.

I also did swimming pool research and there quite a few so I will have to go check them out and see which one I can use.

Running. I can run everywhere (theoretically of course since I cannot really run).

What else? Really nothing. I am going for my last team swim today- 1500m test. I am little scared, I will let you know how it goes.

Triathlete in making

Getting ready for my bike ride:


Of course around 23 years ago.

And my first documented swim workout:


And other news. I just booked a one-way ticket to Hanover. I am starting on March 1. Exciting. Scary, sure, but mostly exciting.

Our neighbors must really love me. Not only I do some of my bike rides on a balcony but today I washed my bike there. In the US I used to take the bike to the shower and clean it there but I could not do it here. My parents would kill me.
Not that I am that concerned about the cleanness of my bike but after the bike ride today, which I did outside, my dad told me that those gray/white stains on the frame is salt they put on roads for snow to melt. So I better clean it. And I did. I am sure that not a lot of people have problems like these. Lucky you (you know who you are)!

Swim improvement!

2 weeks ago (or was it already 3 weeks ago?) we did 350m swim with around 1min rest. As many as we can do until we slow down by a lot (~10sec) but min 6 of them. I did 7 of them and in 5:34-37 range.

We did the same swim today. But this time I managed to do 8 and faster! I went 5:37, 37, 33, 32, 28, 27, 35, 45. So nice improvement. And I am pretty sure that it is real improvement because it did not felt hard until the last one, whereas last time my arms were dead already during the 5th one. Today I was able to pull pretty well until the end. Much better than the last time:)

I was little worried that I will be slower because last time I was in a lane with two speedsters and I was worried that they will lap me and thus I was swimming fast because I did not want to be lapped!
Today I was in a lane with one guy and a girl who is the best junior triathlete in Slovakia. (Although I think that it is not because she is that fast but rather it is due to lousy competition in this country) Nevertheless, she was a very good motivation for me:)
I started slowly at 5:37 and then picked up the pace until I got too tired and slowed down to 5:45. But we were totally uncoordinated in our lane. She went first, I went 10sec behind and the guy 10sec after me. She caught him with around 50m to go, me with around 25 to go. Unfortunately it worked out every time that as she was passing him we hit each other. And then then she slowed down and I had to pass both of them in last 50m and it was a mayhem. Well, good practice for tri swim start:)

We took longer break after the sixth one and we also switched lanes a bit. I went again to the lane with my speedsters. Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, the guys in the lane were tired so no lapping but one slowed down way too much and I caught him with around 125m to go and did not know how to pass him without headcrashing to the other guy, plus the 'slow' guy was not that slow and it would have taken me some time to pass him. So I settled into easier pace behind him, I would have gone faster if I had not caught him.
Unfortunately by the 8th one it was only me and 4 other speedsters in other lanes, so they left me in their (water) dust very soon and I was on my own with noone to compete with.

I am happy about the improvement. Although of course CH kept screaming at me, first it was me going like a windmill, then I was not finishing the stroke all the way to my tights, then I was pulling myself up and down instead of forward and thus wasting my precious energy. Nobody is perfect:) But I think that it was because of the lane mayhem, I was not paying enough attention to my stroke in last ~100m because I had to pay attention not to get hit or hit someone while passing my lanemates.

Good swim!

Wind makes a difference - using graphs from bike

I am not a huge graphs geek, I really do not care about all the data and I do not use it to plan my training (my coach does probably).
But I did the same ride yesterday as I did last week so I wanted to compare them. Actually, they were not entirely the same. Last week, Feb 13 I did ~2h with 3x20min faster. Yesterday, Feb 20, I did an easy ride, kepping my HR around 150.
They were the same in the fact that I took the same route, around 25k out and then back (except for 5min extra on Feb 13. I am not going into details not to make it more confusing).

Interesting thing is that I was faster yesterday. My average speed was higher. And my average watts from both rides were exactly the same, 165, but my avg HR from yesterday was lower ( 149 vs 156 on Feb 13). I find it highly interesting since I was doing those 3x20min faster on Feb 13, thus I would expect my speed and both my watts and HR be higher.

But I did 5min easy between those intervals and it seems that those have a very huge impact on my watts and speed.
Ok, maybe it is not very interesting to compare those two rides after all because they were quite different.

It was realy windy on both days and since it was out and back course it is quite interesting to look at my graphs and compare "out" and "back".

Here is Feb 13.



You can clearly see my first and second interval.
I really have no idea what that spike at around min 51 is. I know that I was turning there and could not find a good place to turn thus my recovery was longer than 5min, it was 7-8min, but that spike does not make sense, it is long and then recovery between intervals is 15+min not 7. I think that it is that stupid CPU unit doing whatever it wants to do sometimes. My ride was around 2h5min and not 2h20min so there is some extra time that CPU recorded and I am sure that it is that time between interval 1 and 2. It is probably also screwing my entire data from this ride.
But then you cannot really see my third interval. You can see the beginning but not really the end because it was so windy that my cool down was only at a slightly lower HR and power as my fast intervals. You can only see the difference between interval and c/d in cadence and speed, HR almost did not fall although power went down slightly.
(That huge fall in watts from min 120 to 130 is probably due to my lack of motivation. I wanted to be done badly! But they I re-composed myself and pedalled myself home.)

And look at interval number 1 and number 2. My power, HR and cadence are around the same. But my speed is so much lower in N2. Like 4mph lower. That's because I turned around after the second interval. Stupid wind!

Now graph from Feb 20:


I kept my HR at around 150. So there are no spikes in HR. But look at the speed and power. You see the shift at min 50? That's when I turned around. Average HR for first 50min was 147 and P 155. The averages for my way back are HR 150, P 170. Quite a difference in power, isn't it? Also my cadence dropped from 88 to 78 on my way back.
Wind really makes a huge difference. You are killing yourself (ok, P 170 is not killing yourself but you know what I mean) and you are not moving. And so does drafting. You are not kiling yourself and you are moving:)

Again one of those &4!Shit!n&? posts

ITB does not feel that great today. F***! WHY?!? I have been doing my PT exercises and I feel the improvement?!?
It does not hurt but I feel it is not 100%.

I am not running tomorrow and then I will see how it goes. But I am going to talk again to CH about this running thing.

I did not do anything training related today. I went to see a volleyball match. It was not that great although it is out highest league. I should have played volleyball instead of running when I was a kid, then I would not have this stupid ITB problem and now I would be able to do whatever I want to. Plus volleyball is not as hard as running, or biking, or any endurande sport.

Ok, I am going to foam roll or something.

Subway, yam!

As of today I have officially eaten Subway sandwiches in 4 different countries. US, Canada, France and I had teryaki chicken in Slovakia today.
American and Canadian subway teste basically the same. At least to me. And they are very good. French subway was not anything special, not very good. Slovak one was ok, not as good as NA one but not as bad as French one.
And Slovak Macadamia Nut cookie is the same as American cookie. Very good.

It was little strange to order the sandwich here. I am so used to order in English (foot-long on wheat bread, Swiss cheese, not toasted, lettuce, cucumber, tomatoe and green peppers, no dressing) and I couldn't find proper words to order it here. I was blabling (self-made word) like an idiot:)

BTW, I did a 1 hour-long run today. Put my yak-trax ( I'm too lazy to google a proper name) and I was all set to plug along in one foot of fresh snow. I liked it, although I would prefer spring-like weather.

I have enough of this

You remember my plan of doing nothing for few months? Well it is nothing like I expected/wanted it to be. I was hoping to do 20hour training weeks and basically play recovery for the rest.
Instead CH makes me do only 11-12h training weeks and I watch TV like 8 hours a day. I watch all those CSI LV, NY etc. I'm already so good at that that I can tell who the murderer is by seeing the character and analysing their face expressions (it's either supposed to be like that and it's a very good acting or it's a very bad acting). That happens to you when you watch 8 hours/day of that stuff.

It's horrible but I don't know what else to do. I don't know anyone here and there is nothing to do here either. Weekends are allright since we go skiing but other days are just boring.

I hope it's over soon. Maybe I should tell CH to let me do more or something.

I got a job offer here in Slovakia today. 33% unemployement rate among recent graduates and I do 1 interview and get an offer. Am I good or what?:)

I was supposed to start my German job on Feb 1. Then last week the US told me that they want me to start on Feb 20, everything is set up and Germany will contact me soon with details. Since nobody contacted me I have decided to be proactive and contacted Germany. Turns out that the person responsible for me is out of office until 27th. US people almost fell on their butts when I told them that. They had no idea. So we have to wait till 27th. Good thing that I have already dealt with HR in this organisation thus I'm not surprised or worried.

Competition

There is indeed a huge difference between swimming alone and swimming with people. I went to the team swim workout today and we did 6x50m all out. I have done 50s all out before, I did my very best and I worked really hard to be as fast as possible. But of course I'm faster when swimming with (or more like against) other people because I would be damned if I did let a person in lane next to me beat me:) Sure, it always depends who is in a lane next to me, some people are just too fast for me, but today I was next to a guy that swims approximately as fast as I do.
And it was great!!! (It would be even better to have a girl swimming next to me, because who cares if I beat a guy, women are my competition, right?:))
At the end we also did relays. Those are a lot of fun. Although me being a competitive person I do not like putting me loosing/winning into someone else's hands. So they are just fun.

I am with no doubt the slowest person there when we do drills/catch-up etc. It is pathetic. But I am no close to being last when swimming. I have no idea why I am so slow doing those drills. Hm hm hm.

By the way, I have run 1h today and my legs hurt. My pure leg muscles. They are not used to running.
Running is horrible. I am running very slowly. Like 9+ min miles slowly because I am trying to keep my HR around 160. Hard on my ego. Or good, depends on how you look at it:) I have no idea how some people have HR <140 when running. Or some pregnant ladies that don't let their HR over 155. I blink and my HR shoots higher than that.

ITB is ok. I felt a little bit of the pressure build-up last week and decided to skip two of my runs. ITB is great again. We shall see how it continues...

Biking outside

For the first time in a very very long time I felt training-related tired yesterday. I went to bed around 9pm and woke up after 8am.

It was cold but sunny yesterday so I put on my skiing gear and went to do my ride outside. Phew. I was supposed to do around 90min but ended up litle over 2h. It took me 50min to go out but 1h15min to get back. Oh, the headwind! I have not realized the tailwind on my way out. Of course.
I did 3x 20min faster segments and I did two of them on my way back but I was still 50% slower! Unbelievable.

This was the second time I was outside since I bought powermeter. I have no idea how to train with power outside. It is super easy on the trainer, you go steady and you can keep watts where you want. But outside, there are uphills, downhills, tailwind, headwind. How the hell am I supposed to keep certain watt range? I have no idea.

I was pushing 190-200+ watts into the wind and not moving. Sure, I was not supposed to be pushing 200 watts and have heart rate 165 because it was my cool-down, but if I went any easier I would not be moving at all and it would take me 3 hours to get back home and I would freeze to death.

What I have learnt is that I can keep my cadence higher comfortably on a road, 90-100 is no problem, whereas 90 on a trainer is quite difficult. Also it seems that my watts are higher. I cannot say for sure yet because I have not done an easy ride with power/HR. But I will try soon.

Then I went ice-skating for an hour on a lake nearby. Skating is great, I like it but falling hurts. I did not fell yesterday but I have fallen countless times in my lifetime. I do not understand how figure skaters do it. They must be covered with bruises. Maybe there is a way to fall properly so it does not hurt that much.

Seems that that bike ride left me totally trashed because I went running in the evening and I was tired. I did 50min and was trashed. I do not remember the last time I felt tired like this while running. And it was an easy run. Like 8:48 min pace. Or with my current running fitness even 8:48 is fast. Probably. Blah.

I will just keep going until I can and we it should get better and better.

1 hour run!!!!

You read right! I ran ONE full hour today. Continuously!!!

Wish me luck!

I met someone

I almost fell off my feet today. Well, technically I was on a bike so I almost fell off the bike.

So I am pedaling and pedaling (in my aerohelmet, skiing gloves, skiing socks and basically my usual biking gear) and suddenly I hear something behind me. And then a TT Cervelo (T3) pulls by me. Then I almost fell off my bike. So I am not crazy after all. Cool!

He asked me who/what I was because apparently all triathletes in Slovakia know each other and he has never seen me. He was also surprised that I am a girl because apparently there are not that many female triathletes and even less on TT bikes and Cervelos.
He also knows CH because he used to take swim lessons with him.

So it was kind of cool that I randomly met another triathlete.

I really want my routine back

I originally wanted to write about how I am not happy about my training lately. I have no routine, which I hate. And biking is horrible there days. The trainer is too loud to use in an apartment building. Even when I am on a balcony it is still loud. I personally do not mind but I can just imagine how annoying it must be to the neighbors. Nobody was complaining yet but I am expecting someone any time now. Plus it is too cold now and the metal frame of the balcony is very rigid now and when I go faster the whole balcony structure starts to vibrate. Not good. Thus I basically cannot go fast enough to get my HR to 140+. So it sucks. I was thinking about sucking it up and go ride outside but I do not have any helmet here. I do not know where my parents put it, even they do not know, probably in that weekend house and helmet is obligatory by law here. So I cannot even go outside. Well, I can buy a helmet but that would be a complete waste since I have good 2-3 helmets somewhere around.
Therefore I was pretty frustrated about my training yesterday.

I just realized, maybe I can use my aerohelmet, which I brought from the US. That might be little stupid though. What do you think? Maybe I will try it. Very few people here know what an aerohelmet is so they would not know what an idiot I am. Hm, I need to think about it. Sure, if it is like -10C outside I am not going anywhere. But it is sunny outside, maybe it will get over 0C. I would have to switch tires as well.

Thankfully I went to swim practice in the evening and I felt better afterwards.
It was quite long workout! The longest intervals I have ever done. W/up around 750m and then 6-10x350 until we can keep the pace. Once we slow down a lot then we are done.
Some people were swimming only 300s and CH told me to do the first one only 300m to see whether I can actually keep up with the 350 group. He believed that I can do it but wanted to make sure:) I could keep up with them so I was doing 350s afterwards.
I was swimming 5:38-34 (I am not sure what rest we were having since there is no pace clock, but it was somewhere around 90sec) for the first six. I felt that I was loosing form and my poor arm muscles could not really pull anymore at the end. But since I have not slowed down yet I did the 7th one. Here I slowed down by almost 10sec so I was done for the day. Phew.

We went 10sec one after another, I went last and I was in a lane with 2 other guys. It really helps to have someone swimming with you. Although it was not really my competitiveness that pushed me, I was more worried that the guys will lap me and that I will slow them down. They did not lap me so all was good:)
I think that I did pretty well in this workout. CH said that maybe he can make something out of me although he also told me that I still have a lot of work to do:) I think that the proper swimming form that he is trying to teach me goes totally out the window when I try to go faster. Oh well.

Ok, I am going to check the temperature, switch tires and look up my skiing gear.

It better pays off!

Have you heard about cold temperatures in Europe? Somewhere in Czech Rep they had -39F (which is also -39C), poor people. Max in Slovakia was around -27F at night 2-3 days ago. I do not know how cold it is at my parent's town because I sleep at night but it is definitelly not as cold because they are in south and it's not in mountains.
When I woke up at around 8am it was around 9F so I decided to postpone my bike ride until it warms up:) Well, when the temp did not went over 18F at 1pm I figured that there is no sense in waiting longer.
I knew I will freeze. I did 70min yesterday in 21F and I was cold. And today was even colder.

I had my skiing socks and another pair of socks (I was surprised that my foot fitted into my bike shoes), 2 pairs of pants, skiing gloves, hat, and multiple layers on top. I was ok except for my toes.
I was supposed to do 80min but I cut my w/up and c/d short 10min so I did 70min.

My poor powermeter CPU almost froze, it stopped showing numbers towards the end and usually that part of the trainer where fluid is stored is completely hot after the ride but not today. Maybe I should stay inside next time. I hope this torture pays off in races.

Also....

I have ZERO runnign fitness. Really, ZERO. I did 10min easy, 30min with 1min easy, 1min faster, 10min easy today, and I almost died during those 1min faster sections. It was horrible. I am actually sore now. Blah. Running sucks:

Pool fun and the longEST run (in like forever) and bike fail

Stupid trainer! I was supposed to do 90min bike ride today but that stupid trainer started to do strange noises and I think that our neighbors started to bang on the wall (although I am not 100% about that but I think so) so I called it quits after 20min. Makes me super angry! I tightened all the bolts on the trainer and will try it again tomorrow.

Also, I ran 50min yesterday. 50 minutes! I checked and it is the longest run since March 1st when I ran 7 miles.
So far no problem.

I did another team swim workout yesterday. It was not real workout since our coach was spending few minutes with each of us (and there was around 15 of us) to look at out videos.
My feet are too low and bend my elbows to late and pull without not fully bent elbow. But as I learnt we all have the same problem with bending elbows and keeping high elbow.
Then we did relays, which was fun. I think that now everyone thinks that I am super competitive:) We did 50m relay, then 50m breastroke, then 25m butterfly/25m backstroke, and 50m freestyle. Coach asked me how I was doing because I was working as if it was world championship:) It was real fun, I even jumped of the blocks and did not even kill myself.

And my life update. Obviously I have not start in Germany on Feb 1st:) But US company proposed to Germany to have me start on Feb 20th but Germany has not answered yet. So we are all still waiting. Still do not know where in Germany it will be.

Team swim

I did my first team swim workout yesterday! I liked it and I was with the faster half of swimmers who did longer sets:) It was an easy swim, long easy intervals. w/up (different strokes, drills etc) ~500m (I had no idea what I was supposed to do so I had to ask frequently thus I did only 500m although I was supposed to do more), 6x400, 50, 2x400.
There were 14 of us in 4 lanes. I am not used to swimming with 3 other people in a lane so I need to get used to it. Especially how to do flip turns without crashing into someone.
Swim was easy because CH was taking our videos. At first he did videos randomly during those 400s and then each of us swam 50 and he took video of that. And we are going to look at them on Thursday. That would be cool to watch me swim with CH commentary and see what I am doing wrong and right.

I also ran yesterday. 30min. That was two days in a row running. So far so good. I also used my Garmin for the first time in like 6 months:) And I had HRM as well to collect some running data. Sure I do not have any data yet because I have not put it into computer.