Leadville training week 7?!!!!!

Posted on April 27, 2013 by
Whew!

I can’t believe I’ve been training for Leadville now for 7 weeks, my plan was to blog every week but time has been a tough commodity to come by lately.  In order to make things work these last few weeks I’ve had to give up my writing, give up some sleep and admittedly on occasions given up shower time ! ;-) Baby wipes were my shower on some days.

Before I get into the last 7 weeks, in case you missed it. Here is VisionQuests VQ and you posting this month:  http://www.visionquestcoaching.com/2013/04/06/vq-you-gf/

My work goes through quarterly busy cycles (no pun intended :) ) which involves working 12 + hours a day and weekends for at least 3 weeks straight. Although between year end and quarter end it feels like its been 4 month straight.  It isn’t easy fitting in 12 hours of biking in on top of the work hours.  Its draining both mentally and physically.  Training has been ramping up, weekday rides have become longer 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours, we’ve added 1 additional weekday ride on Wednesdays and weekend rides on both days have become longer 3-4 hours.   To add fuel to the fire mother nature has been very unco-operative.  Record rain falls have put roads and trails underwater. Not to mention the temperatures have also been below average. What has been a challenging month was made even more challenging.  Last weekend we had 3 longer rides scheduled in a row – Friday, Saturday, Sunday.  I managed nearly 3 hours that Friday night which included riding through snow storm. Four hours on Saturday along the lake and finally a 3 hour ride on Sunday in the suburbs on the road with April and Melissa to get in some hills.  I completely misjudged how hard a ride would be when you are on a mountain bike and your two girlfriends are on road bikes, I could barely keep up!

My typical weeks look like this:

Monday – Funtional Training – core weights etc.

Tuesday – Threshold workouts which have been getting progressively longer we are now at 2 hours of cycling with 3 20 minute intervals at 95-100 % of threshold.

Wednesdays – I would try to get my swim in but we have now added a mid-week sub max ride to this schedule. 2-3 hours.

Thursdays – 1 1/2 hours of riding at tempo – faster paced.

Friday – rest

Saturday – 3 hours with 3 20 minute threshold intervals mixed in

Sunday – We are up to 4 hours steady pace.

For the most part i’ve kept up with all the required training however this week I had to bail on the Wednesday workout and squeezed in sometime on the bike on Thursday morning by adding on to my commute.  I also just took today off, we celebrated meeting our work deadline last night, I may or may not have had a few too many.  So I gave myself a break and opted for 2 hours of hip opening yoga.

Emotionally I’ve been holding it together, with a couple of meltdowns here and there. With trails being closed, the weather and work I was getting discouraged. In addition other club members were in Solvang,  California at a 5 day cycling camp which included 30,000 feet of climbing.  I think I’ve climbed 500 feet at most!

I am tracking my workouts here on Strava.  http://app.strava.com/dashboard

What have I been riding you ask?  Shopping for a mountain bike was another big time consumer. I spent hours in bike shops on ebay and craigslist.  I had hoped to buy something from one of the local bike shops but I ended up finding a beauty on ebay.  My main goal was to get something as light as possible. The lighter the bike the “easier” leadville will be, if you can use easy and leadville in the same sentence that is.  Meet Rocky Alexander, the new member of my bike family.  He weighs in at a meer 21 pounds.  He is a Trek Superfly 100 – Carbon frame, XTR groupo and a beautiful new SID world cup shocks with remote lockout. He is more bike than I could ever hope for.

new mountain bike

new mountain bike

I’ve taken some fun pictures along the way.

Here is where I had to turn around on the trail because it was about a foot under water.

Underwater trail

Underwater trail

TThis was one of the few days that the sun actually showed up.

Sunny day

Sunny day

This was my Friday night “snow” ride was attempting to ride on a trail but as you can see the entrance and picnic area was all underwater.

picnic area underwater

picnic area underwater

Here is the result of the snow I rode through.

IMG_1841

This is the view from the only hill along the lakefront trail.

The Toboggan Hill.

The Toboggan Hill.

Finally, between stress and work I have had some rough blood sugars to deal with.  May will be my month of getting it back together.

dexcom reading

dexcom readin

IMG_1808

Well time to head off to bed 5 am wake up for crazy dave’s half marathon.  A fun little race that friends put together, no entry fees, no t-shirt just some fun with friends Tom has been training pretty hard for it and I expect him to PR!  I was planning on running it but have not found the time to train.  My running has been very sparatic at best.  Once in a while in order to get a run in I’ll run part way to work.  I figure with the 50 pound back pack it will be good hike a bike training at the very least! I’ll be on my bike riding the course cheering everyone on!

Full back pack complete with cycling gear and laptop!

Full back pack complete with cycling gear and laptop!

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The BioHub Brouhaha of 2013: An Animated Retrospective

Posted on March 11, 2013 by

Reblogged from Typical Type 1 Diabetes Blog:

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So most of us know what happened last week with our super top-secret cure-that's-not-really-a-cure exploding Internet DOC rage fundraising nonsense. And everyone has an opinion on the subject; most of those opinions have already been (very eloquently) expressed in others' blogs.

Multiple times, I tried explaining the situation to some non-diabetic, non-DOC friends, family members and co-workers. I work at an advertising and PR firm, so I assumed most of my contemporaries would really get what a shitty PR move the *fauxnouncement* was.

Read more… 939 more words

A great job of describing the events leading up to the supposed "miracle cure" for diabetes announced last week. Hilarious!!!
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First week of Leadville training done!

Posted on March 10, 2013 by

power tapThis was my first official week of Leadville training!

My week was a little disrupted by having an out of town guest at work who was training me on some software.    

Monday night was 4 intervals of 20 minutes at 90% of my threshold. Threshold is what you use to measure your bike fitness.  There is a lot of science behind measuring your threshold or power.  Basically power = velocity x force.  High force and low cadence can be just as high power as high velocity (cadence) x low force and your power is measured by what you can manage in a certain time frame.  There are entire books on the subject http://www.amazon.com/Training-Racing-Power-Meter-Hunter/dp/1934030554#reader_1934030554.  The test I typically do is a 20 minute test.  To calculate your threshold you cycle as hard as you can for 20 minutes then take 95% of the average threshold for the 20 minutes to get your number.  I hadn’t done a test in well over a year so I had been using a very old threshold to train with.  The test itself is really hard and I was also afraid that the number would be a lot lower than my last test. The other factor is weight.  Two people with a threshold of 200 may not be equally strong on the bike depending on their weight.  The true measure is watts per kilogram.  As previously posted my required watts per kilogram should be at least 3.5 in order for me to complete Leadville.  To calculate this I take my threshold and divide it by my weight in kilograms. This goes without saying the lower your weight and the higher your power or threshold the stronger you are on the bike.  The following is a table of watts per kilogram and how it rates amongst categorized riders:

www.cyclingtipsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/powerprofiling.jpg

Tuesday was dinner out with the out of town work guest. Wednesday I swam because I had to be at work for training. Wednesday night I was exhausted from two days of software training. Thursday morning I finally caved. I did the test, mainly because it was in my training plan. And god forbid I don’t follow my training plan to a T!  I was very nervous, I was going to find out exactly where I stood, knowing where I need to be for Leadville.  How far behind was I going to be?  I don’t do well with these tests, precisely  because of the nerves and the pressure.   I completed the first 20 minutes and ended up with 219 average watts which equates to 208 functional threshold (95%).  In the last few minutes I couldn’t even stand up out of my seat my legs were shot.  With my current weight a 208 TH puts me at about 3.14 watts per kilogram.  The bottom range of good according to the chart above.  My plan to get to the coveted 3.5 mark is to lose about 6 pounds and get my threshold up to 220.   I did another 20 minutes, initially just riding then finishing strong and ended up at 192 for my second 20 minutes so at least I have some endurance.  My new threshold will now be used as a benchmark for training from which to build off of.  Your threshold or power can be monitored while on the computrainer or while riding outdoors if you have a wheel with a powertap hub and bike computer picured at the top.

I also played around with my basil rates on Thursday morning.  I bolused 50% for a banana breakfast and reduced my basil to 60%.  I did this because I feel like I consistently go low during my computrainer classes.  The idea backfired, I think mainly the intensity and adrenaline raised my blood sugar and left me with high blood sugars for the next few hours.  My next plan of attack is to reduce my basil but only for about an hour, so that the normal basil kicks in prior to finishing the workout.   Thursday night I treated myself to a massage, trying to alleviate my on-going neck and shoulder issues.  I finished Friday off with another functional training class.

Next on the schedule was another intensity ride on Saturday.  I’ve never done 3 in one week before.  It consisted of a 15 minute warm up followed by 4 x 1 minute intervals at 135% of my new threshold then 2 x 10 minute blocks at threshold then a final 4 x 1 minute of the same 135% intervals.  I got off the bike and could barely walk!  I did a bit better with my bolus/basil plan this morning but it still dropped during the workout which required me to inhale 3 blocks.  I ended up at 120, so will continue to play around with my basil and bolus rates.  From here I had to rush out to get to the winter bike swap where I was volunteering for four hours at the American Diabetes Association booth.  I was also hoping to find a good deal on a used mountain bike.  No such luck.  Mountain bike shopping has been very time consuming and is very confusing!  More on that in another post. I ended the week today with a 3 hour endurance ride.  This ride was particularly hard.  I spent 3 hours on the computrainer pretty much by myself.  I hadn’t had much dinner the night before and I bolused a bit much for breakfast.  I ended up taking at least 7-8 cliff blocks, a gel and about half a protein power bar.  With all these carbs my blood sugar ran at a steady 90-100 a little low than I would like.  I rode fairly steady, on a fairly flat course.  At certain times I really had to muster the strength to continue which was probably a result of poor nutrition on Saturday,  picking up an additional intensity ride in the week and low blood sugar. Oh and lastly, this numbskull left her cycling shoes at home so I did the entire ride in running shoes.

Overall I’m excited to have finished my first week of Leadville training.  Next week should prove to be challenge as well.  I need to squeeze in the workouts with Wednesday night concert plans and Thursday night cooking class. I typically don’t like to plan mid-week events because it messes with my sleep, my eating, my blood sugar and my overall training schedule.   In order to guarantee that I get all the required workouts in I had to plan out my week ahead of time.

Monday am – Functional Training

Monday pm – Threshold progression training

Tuesday pm -  Strength Endurance training

Wednesday – rest

Thursday – rest

Friday – Functional Training /swim

Saturday – endurance ride

Sunday – Intensity ride

Ideally I need a rest tomorrow but I really need to make sure I get the workouts in and knowing that Wednesday and Thursday I am out it will be better to get them in early in the week.

Have a great week everybody!

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Perfect Training and Perfect Race Execution

Posted on February 28, 2013 by

leadville100-3Perfect training execution and perfect race execution.

A few days ago, this is what I was told I had to do in order to finish the Leadville 100 mountain bike race.

But first a catch up.  I haven’t posted in a long time mainly because for the first 6 week of the year I was consumed by work. I’m talking anywhere from 12 – 18 hour days.  You might wonder how this interferes with my workouts and training?  What I found was that no matter how tired I was in the mornings from a mental standpoint it helped me considerably if I got up early and worked out.  I was usually able to keep this up for at least 3 days Monday – Wednesday, by the time Thursday hit it was all I could do to get up and get to work by 9 after getting home at midnight or 1 am.  When I didn’t workout I got extremely down about my life and my job, not to mention the crappy blood sugars.  So this is what I did.  For the most part Mondays was an hour of functional training, Tuesdays was a computrainer class and Wednesdays was swim or functional training – usually functional training because I have completely lost my swimming mojo! I also managed to squeeze in a yoga class on the weekend an ART session and another computrainer session followed by a short run/walk on the weekend.  Aside from a half marathon I ran at the end of January (more on this below),  running is still not an option for me.  For as long as I’ve been running and for as many injuries I ‘ve had this one is a stubborn bitch.  My ART guy – Dr. Drynan at Activebody  has located the issue in my gemellus muscle which is not my glutes but is buried deep underneath my glutes which is what makes it hard to get to. See more info:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_gemellus_muscle . Anyway, I continue treatment I continue rolling and using my lacrosse ball. I had signed up for the half marathon in December with the hopes that I would be recovered and running.  I ran it not having run 1 mile since mid-December.  It was not pretty and I discovered that despite being an ironman and thinking I’m “in shape” for anything running a half marathon untrained hurts like a son of a bitch.  For about 4-5 days after I was walking like I had just run the fastest marathon of my life.  Who knew?!

The other reason for not blogging was that I was doing some major soul searching on what races I was going to do this year.  Vision Quest Coaching announced that one of their key events for 2013 was the Leadville 100 Mountain bike race. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadville_Trail_100_MTB.  When I saw this I was unable to let it go.  In my heart I really wanted to do it.  I wanted to really test myself and push myself to do it.  I wanted to take my cycling to the next level.  I wanted to do something that would be exciting and scary at the same time.  People who are doing this race are hardcore, their power to weight ratio is in the upper 3’s or higher.  This is before they even start training.   On top of it all, it is a mountain bike race, I haven’t seriously mountain biked in years.  I did love it though.  So, while I was deliberating and wavering back and forth with my decision I found it hard to write about anything.  This race is by far one of the hardest endurance races around (yes harder than a IM), mainly because of the amount of climbing, the terrain and the elevation.  Over 55 % of the course is climbing, the terrain although not technical contains some single track and some pretty technical down hills, finally there is the elevation – the race takes place at over 10,000 feet.  You lose 80% of your fitness before you even start.  Doesn’t this sound great?  Why would I even consider doing this knowing that my chances of finishing are pretty slim?  I want to do this race and I plan on doing everything in my power to finish, I will never finish if I don’t try. So there you have it.  I feel like I have a better chance of finishing by doing it through Vision Quest Coaching than I would if I did it on my own.  They will provide a training plan, training rides and cover all the logistics for the race weekend including race nutrition supplied by Skratch Labs which I’m told is great for diabetics!

So yes, I signed up.  I plan to blog about my adventure as I go through the following months of training.  I hope that by doing so, I may inspire other diabetics to go out and try something that maybe they might fail at but just maybe they will succeed.  I’m telling you if (when) I cross that finish line in 11:59:59 it will be my biggest accomplishment.

Last week, I attended the first organizational meeting.  I arrived and took my place in a chair in the back and watched and listened.  I’m pretty sure I was as white as a ghost as I listened to Robbie Ventura discuss the race, the training and the logistics.  I looked around saw some very fit people.  As we disbanded at the end of the meeting the coolest thing happened.  Earlier we all stood up one by one announcing our name and why we wanted to do the race.  I proudly stood up and said “I am Gillian Forsyth, I am a Type 1 diabetic, I am doing this race because I want to motivate and inspire other type 1 diabetics by writing about my experience and hopefully proving that T1 diabetes shouldn’t stop you from anything.  I just want to finish”. After,  I was approached by a man who said –  are you a T1 diabetic? I said yes.  He said so am I.  I nearly cried.  He had gotten it at age 50 about 6 months before he was to do his first Leadville race, which he finished.  I was truly inspired.  Here I was hoping to be the inspiror and I ended up being an inspiree.  We chatted about blood sugars and nutrition.  I’m thinking we will have a lot to teach each other, he is an awesome mountain biker and not so great at being a diabetic.  I believe I am a better diabetic and a not so great mountain biker… so it’s a win win.  I am so glad that I stood up loud and proud, otherwise we may never have known this about each other.

Back to the post title.  As I was gathering my things I looked at Robbie and asked him if I had a hope in hell.  This is what he said – Gillian, you need to have perfect training and perfect race execution.  Perfect……

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TEAM WILD!!!

Posted on February 12, 2013 by

Team-WILDOn top of everything else I’ve decided to do this year (more on this in a later post) I am officially one of the triathlon coaches at Team Wild Camp this year!  I cannot wait to coach and mentor other athletes who have diabetes.  The first step is that they have already signed up for camp but the real test will be to keep them motivated and make them believe that they can do whatever they put their mind to!  It is going to be fantastic.  Not only that, I get to spend 5 days in beautiful Boulder, Colorado! In case you didn’t know, the founder of team wild, Mari Ruddy, also started the red rider program for the Tour de Cure.  Where cyclists with diabetes wear a red rider jersey in order to be noticed in the crowd.  For one day you get to feel special.

We have been busy putting together agenda’s and training plans for cyclists, runners, walkers and triathletes.  There is so much to learn!

One cool thing that Team Wild has done is put out this cycling book written by Team Wild coach and  Olympic cyclist Nicole Freedman. To get your copy just click the link: http://wildcyclebook.com.  Its totally free!

In case you missed it and you want to read more about camp check out the website here:http://teamwildathletics.com/2013/01/23/teamwild-coach-gillian-forsyth-inspires-athletes-with-diabetes-to-live-life-to-the-fullest/

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WHAT ARE MY LIMITATIONS?

Posted on January 29, 2013 by

mountain bikeI have been struggling to put together my race schedule for this year.  As of today the only race I have officially signed up for is Ironman Arizona in November of this year.  Everything else is up in the air.  I have spent the last few weeks deliberating with myself on whether or not to sign up for a race that I probably have no business signing up for.  It would be like getting to the start line of the Leadman race I did last year but 10X (may as well be a million for all I know) more difficult. I just know that it will be the hardest thing I have ever done.  I doubted myself right up to the 5K swim start at Leadman, thinking I had no business being there.  This will be the same but much, much worse.

I battle between thoughts of “JUST DO IT”  and “AM I F’N CRAZY”! .

The race is the Leadville 100 MTB race on August 10, 2012. http://www.leadvilleraceseries.com/page/show/315773-100-mile-mtb-race  It takes place in Leadville, Colorado and reaches an elevation of 12,500 feet.  For someone who lives at just about sea level it will be no easy task riding in such thin air!   No training in the mid-west can properly prepare you for this. If you are a cycling buff watch the movie RACE ACROSS THE SKY it is a documentary on the race. I watched it over the weekend – a lot of hike-a-biking!

I haven’t owned a mountain bike in about 8 years since my beloved rockhopper was stolen from my condo bike room in Chicago.  BUT, I do love hills!  Leadman had two big climbs  with an elevation gain of about 6,500 feet and only reached 6,500 feet above sea level.  I loved it! And finished despite my haphazard self-coaching!  I used to mountain bike back in Ontario.  A group of us would do 24 hour relay races, 8 hour rides and some adventure type races so I’m no stranger to mountain biking either.  Leadville isn’t crazy technical just high and long!

Why do it this year?  The training center I belong to – Vision Quest is organizing the trip around the race, they will plan everything for you.  This is a huge bonus in and of itself.  Typically riders need to arrange for their own support crew at the race.  We will have all our nutrition and rooms and transportation arranged.  If any of you have traveled for ironmen or other races you know that this stuff is huge.  And I know it will be great, did a cycling camp in Santa Rosa California a couple of years ago with them, it was one of my most memorable vacations.  I also blame it on fate, before this event was even announced I went for my first mountain bike ride in ages when I was home last summer and it truly gave me the itch to do it again.  The seed had already been planted, so when VQ announced they were going I knew that I was meant to do it!  (THIS IS ME BEING CRAZY).

Why do I want to do it?  I love a challenge.  I love biking.  I love mountain biking.  I love outdoors.  I want to show the world that diabetes is not going to stop me.  Although this post has the undertones of doubt- I am over 50% positive that I can finish with the right training. Maybe even 75%.  Also, the training would give me a huge cycling base for IM Arizona, which I know is flat but that will make it even easier!

What is going to stop me?  Buying a new mountain bike .  Paying for several bike camps is also not cheap.  25-50% doubt that I won’t finish.  Multiple mini-vacations without Tom.  Convincing the boss (Tom not Ruby) to let me do it.  Second guessing my ability to know my own limitations.

So there it is, on paper for the world to see. The sign-up deadline is Feb 1st.  I have two days left to decide. Stay Tuned.

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NY Marathon 2014 baby!

Posted on January 25, 2013 by

NYC-Marathon(1)The NYRR finally came to a decision a few weeks ago about what to do for the people who were signed up to do the cancelled 2012 NY marathon.  They offered 5 different options:

  • $255 Refund
  • Guaranteed Entry into 2013 NY Marathon payment required
  • Guaranteed Entry into 2014 NY Marathon payment required
  • Guaranteed Entry into 2015 NY Marathon payment required
  • Guaranteed Entry in this years NY 1/2 marathon payment required

Since I will be a little busy in November with IM Arizona. Here is my choice…. drum roll please!!!! Who’s joining me?

nyrr choice

It was pretty good of them to offer a full discount considering they are not required to.  I just wasn’t sure if I would ever qualify again and didn’t want to give up the chance to finally run it!  I believe my new qualifying time (including moving to the next old age group :) ) would be 1:34 for a half , that would mean shaving 4 minutes off my previous time or 18 seconds per mile….perhaps doable but why risk it.  The qualifying times are in the link below.

http://cbrun.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/stricter-qualifying-times-for-nyc-marathon-in-2013/

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