Happy feet

One thing I always notice when I start training for a Marathon is that my feet have to go through a phase of toughening up. Even if I have been running regularly, the relentless onslaught of longer, harder and more densely packed workouts means one thing... Blisters.

The first thing is, obviously, to make sure that you are running with shoes that don't normally lead to blisters and with a reasonably good running technique. As you know, I am a follower of the minimalist running movement and precisely because minimalist shoes are so unforgiving, you quickly learn to run with as little force in any other direction than that necessary to overcome gravity: this reduces blisters from the feet sliding around in the shoe. Or, said the other way round, as minimalist shoes are not designed to restrict your feet like a kind of "crutch", they tend to be much more spacious, like the Run Amoc shoes I run with.

Having said that, from a sudden increase in activity, blisters are bound to appear on the toes and directly under the ball of the foot from the skin stretching and rubbing against the sole of the shoe as your foot "dorsiflexes" (a fancy way of saying that the toes bend upwards). I find treating blisters is a bit of a fine art.

Any blisters that do not support your weight while you run can be just left to their own devices to heal. That milky liquid inside them (appropriately called "serum") is full of natural goodness to speed up healing and acts as a cushion in the meantime. If the blister is open, then being left to dry out is just as effective. If you have to put a plaster on an open blister then putting just any kind of plaster can interfere with the healing process, not allowing the blister to dry out and form a scab. This is where those magic plasters by Compeed come into play - they trap the serum and therefore speed up the healing acting like a second skin, as if the blister had not burst in the first place. The idea is to leave the plaster on as long as possible or until the blister has completely healed.

The art comes into play when you have to bear weight on the blisters - in other words, if you can't wait for them to heal naturally before returning to training or competition. If they are closed, then it can be very painful to put weight on them because the serum adds to the pressure on already tender skin. The other issue is that, left to their own devices, the old outer skin dries up and cracks exposing a virgin skin beneath which is not really yet up to the rigours of vigourous running, so the whole cycle is likely to repeat itself.

In my experience, the trick is to lance the blisters as soon as they emerge so that the outer layer of skin is largely conserved and becomes thicker. On the other hand you don't want too much dead skin to build up on your feet. Firstly, this makes your feet less sensitive and is a bit like wearing thicker soled shoes: if you'd wanted to wear thicker soled shoes you wouldn't be running in minimalist shoes... Secondly, I have found that the islands of dead skin can move around while you run, causing further blisters and irritation in the joins between dead skin and live skin. The question is: how much to remove? Sometimes you start picking at a bit and a massive chunk comes off - if you are lucky you manage not to take any live skin off into the bargain and the new skin you reveal below is sufficiently mature by now to withstand your running demands. If you are unlucky then you are in the situation described in the next paragraph. The ideal thing is to try to avoid to this by lancing blisters as soon as possible and by regularly filing off "waffer thin" layers of dead skin from the soles of your feet and toes. I use one of those Ped Egg gadgets for this purpose and I keep a penknife handy for emergency lancing of blisters immediately after running.

Doubles as a cheese grater

The worst case are open blisters on the soles of your feet or toes. This is where Compeed comes in to save the day, but there is little you can do to avoid the cycle repeating itself once the new skin has come through (except build up your training more slowly). You can only hope that you catch the blister in time before it bursts the next time...

I read in Haile Gebrselassie's biography that he once jeopardized a 10K race by lancing blisters the night before which then became infected. I must say (while touching wood), that this has never happened to me and i never bother to use a sterilized implement to puncture the blisters nor do I usually put any disinfectant. That is not to say that neither of those two things would be a good idea.

NY Marathon Week 1/9

I'm starting to think that I'd like to prepare for this Marathon all by myself. I pretty much know the drill by now. I've made up a detailed plan for the first two weeks and a rough outline of how many ECOs ("training points") I would like to put in every week.

Week 1. Objective ECOs 400, actual ECOs 530

I think that the fact I have had to wear this activity monitor all week for the study I have been participating in has influenced me to do slightly more exercise than I had planned. Nevertheless, I would say that this week represents an average week taken over the whole year (including peaks for competition and troughs for holidays). I also think I did the series of 8 lots of 4 minutes at 17 kph on Wednesday much more conscientiously than usual because I felt as though I was being "watched"!

On Thursday I went to work on my bike and went home via a friend's house. I hadn't seen him since he'd done his Ironman in Klagenfurt so it was an opportunity to hear all the gory details. He did a good time on the bike and on the Marathon but his swim took him nearly an hour longer than he expected. In fact, he only just missed the cutoff by 3 minutes. But the remarkable thing is that he swears that he had no idea at the time: he looked at his watch on leaving the water and thought "Good, an hour and 17 minutes" and it was only later he realised that he had actually taken two hours and 17 minutes and has no idea what happened to that missing hour! My theory is that he was abducted by aliens... Either that, or he slept in and started the Ironman an hour late. It's one thing to take much longer than expected but another thing altogether not to even realise. I can't imagine having to swim for so long and then do the rest of the Ironman. In fact I hadn't seen this particular friend since almost a year before so I took the chance to reclaim my aero helmet that I leant him (he didn't get on with it so he didn't end up using it). The only problem was that I had to ride home on my mountain bike wearing it so I hope nobody spotted me. God knows what a fellow triathlete would have thought.

The strange thing (in a good way) was that I felt so fresh and full of energy on Friday that I decided to do a couple of longer series of 15 minutes running progressively faster from 15.5 kph to 16.5 kph. To have done a third set would have been the difference between an enjoyable workout and a hard workout so I left it at that, and, in any case, I had a one and a half hour run planned for the next day.

The "long run" on Saturday (in quotes because it is not really very long yet, but will build up over the next few weeks) was, as a result, a bit of a struggle. In retrospect it would probably have been wiser not to have run on Friday. After about half an hour a sharp pain in a tendon on the top of my right foot made it very difficult to run and I seriously considered packing it in there and then, just in case I did myself an injury. As I wasn't carrying a phone or much money, it would have been a bit of a hassle to get home any other way than on foot, so I decided to gingerly press on with the run. In the end the pain seemed to go away and it hasn't hurt since but it is something to keep an eye on.

After "cheating" on Friday, Sunday was going to be a genuine rest day. That is until my next door neighbour called round and asked if I fancied going on a short bike ride. I'd spent much of the day wrestling with my triathlon bike, trying to fit the new nose cone arrangement that would allow me to raise the bars by 3 cm but a screw had broken off in such a way that it is virtually impossible to get the stump out. That kind of thing makes me extremely nervous and obsessive so it did me the world of good to get out for a bit and clear my head for a bit.

Santander por tu corazón

What better place to find a bunch of willing Human Guinea Pigs than amongst the 6,500 employees of Santander who work in the "Cuidad Financiera" campus and whose employer is willing for us to take time out of the working day to take part in the tests.

The initiative is a joint collaboration between Valentín Fuster, an internationally renowned heart surgeon and Banco Santander (whose Head of Operations is one José María Fuster - I'm not sure if he is any relation). So far 2,000 people have taken part and the aim is to get to at least 3,000. The goal of the research is to find ways to detect heart disease before actual irreversible damage has taken place.

Yesterday it was my turn. The day before I had had to follow a diet that was low in fibre, no alcohol and, what was particularly hard for me, with no fizzy drinks. Actually, I got the date wrong so I followed this diet on Monday and turned up at the medical centre on Tuesday only to find that I was programmed for the Wednesday. So no fizzy drinks for another whole day. It was probably just as well because I was in such a rush to get there on time on the Tuesday that I got very stressed and probably would have recorded much higher pulse rates and blood pressure.

The tests started at 8:30 and took 6 hours(!) in total to complete. They included blood and urine tests, a CAT scan and an ultrasound exploration of the arteries in my neck, stomach and groin. The reason it took six hours is because I also had to complete a detailed questionnaire on my dietary habits and my physical and mental well being. Even though in the run up to the Ironman last year I had been very diligently recording everything I ate and drank, it was surprising just how difficult it was to estimate what I had been typically consuming over the last year. I'm not terribly confident that the results will be terribly accurate. It seems to me that it would be more accurate to ask participants to keep a food and drink diary for a week although I suspect that this introduces Heisenberg Uncertainty: it is a well known phenomena that if you count calories, you tend to consume less.

To measure my activity during a week, I have to wear a little device on the outside of my clothes:

This is an "accelerometer", much like the device built into iPhones. I asked whether it could tell if you were riding a bike (as your centre of gravity doesn't really move up and down very much, unless you are going over rough terrain) and they said that it could sense in three dimensions. But then I thought about it afterwards: if it can measure velocity somehow (perhaps by adding up the accelerations) then it will think that I am doing a lot of exercise when I drive a car... I think that the device can only really tell the difference between being sedentary and active as well as judging the quality of your sleep (rather like those apps that exist for the iPhone). I also have to wear a heart rate monitor which sends its data to the accelerometer for recording, so with these two bits of information it should be possible to calculate how many calories I am burning reasonably well. Of course there are many ways of doing this more accurately but it has to be a foolproof protocol that everyone can follow without problems. The fact is that people doing as much exercise as I do will be among the outliers in a population of office workers, so its not really that important to distinguish between running and cycling or to capture swimming (the device isn't waterproof). In any case, the battery life limitation means I only have to wear the heart rate band for the first 24 hours and another 12 hours of my choosing.

You may be wondering why I am wearing the device on the outside of my clothes. This is because it has a light sensor which is used to detect whether it is day or night. I also have to record the time I go to sleep (which is actually quite an annoying thing to try to do) and the time I wake up (which is when the alarm goes off, so at least that is easy). I would have thought that this information would be more useful than the light meter reading which, as I type this, is pressed up against my desk and probably thinks that I am fast asleep in a dark room. Wearing the device on the outside around the work campus is like a declaration of "I am over 40!" as that is the minimum age required to take part in the programme. That doesn't bother me in the slightest but it is a bit disgusting to have to put the sweat soaked strap over your shirt after a hard workout.

I'll have to go back again in 3 years and 6 years, even if I am no longer an employee of Santander or, for that matter, living in Madrid. In the meantime, I am very curious to see the kind of results they come up with, as well as anything they might find wrong with me.

Objective:New York Marathon 2012

So it's back to work in all senses of the word. There are only 9 weeks between now and the New York Marathon on the 3rd of November, so it's time to start gearing my training towards that. However I decide to run the race, I want to run it within myself so I need to train pretty much as I have done for the last few Marathons I've done.

It seems like my trainer Jonathan is still on holiday so I'm having to make things up a little bit. In fact, I don't think I will stick so fanatically to whatever training plan he comes up with this time - the more flexibility, the less stress I suffer - but it is important to respect as much as possible the volume, intensity and rest days. Jonathan uses a system similar to TRIMPs (TRaining IMPulses) called ECOs (Erm, I've COmpletely forgotten what this stands for) which allows us to compare volume and intensity across swimming (which I won't be doing much of), running and biking.

To put things in perspective, running a Marathon at the speed I run it scores between 400 and 500 ECOs, so it would be a good idea for the total number of ECOs for most weeks to be safely above that number. Another guideline is not to increase ECOs too sharply from one week to the next or, indeed, to reduce too dramatically because this can cause you to peak too early. The general idea is to build up to a couple of peaks of increasing height before the final taper. There are a number of key sessions which have to be included every week starting with the famous "long, steady run" but not forgetting some speed work which I believe is necessary not only if you want to run a Marathon reasonably fast but also for training the muscle fibres that get recruited towards the end of a Marathon when you have worn out all the usual suspects. Lastly, the intensity should be mostly low, aerobic work, with a relatively small proportion (10%-20%) of high intensity, high speed workouts. The philosophy behind "polarized training" is to avoid the middle ground which is where most people end up training by default: doing easy workouts too hard because they are boring and time consuming and therefore being too tired to do the high quality sessions as hard as they should be.

That's not to say that it is such a simple matter to come up with a good training programme but let's just say that it is enough to help me fill in the gaps. Last week I was in Asturias and only managed to clock up 225 ECOs. This week I'm aiming for about 400 so that I can build up from there.

Pies libres

I had to do a serious double take on my way to work on the bike this morning. I noticed a new shop in the village that I live in on the outskirts of Madrid, dedicated to minimalist running shoes - in particular, Vibram Five Fingers! Unbelievable. To think that I was getting all those weird looks running right in front of this spot in my Vibram KSO's just over three years ago.

I've been thinking of getting some more for some time now as the KSO's I have are a little on the small side and, in practice, I never use them because my toes feel too compressed. On the other hand, it's not as though I actually need any more running shoes. Between my Soft Star Run Amocs for outside, my 8€ Newfeel Many's from Decathlon for the more sweaty treadmill training that causes the dye to bleed on my Run Amocs and my Vivobarefoot Ultras for competition, I think I have got everything covered. Still, you can bet I will be popping in to investigate the shop on the way home...

POSTDATA: I finally got around to dropping in to the Pies Libres shop last night. "Are you the American cyclist who posted something about us on your blog?" Well, more of a British triathlete but let's not split hairs. As I was so easily recognized I assumed that I must be one of the very few people to ever visit the shop but in fact it was so busy that I had to wait to be attended to! For having blogged about them, I was given a 5% discount on any Vibram Five Fingers, a free class on running technique as well as an invitation to the Expobike event, taking place in Madrid on the 14, 15 and 16th of September.

As usual, I was a little overwhelmed by the number of Vibram models available and ended up with the familiar dilemma of whether to buy a lightweight model for road and treadmill running or a more rugged pair for trail running. I must say, the person who attended me was very knowledgeable about Vibram shoes and seemed to know his stuff about minimalist running. It was useful to confirm that I would probably have to order the biggest size available (47) but not having one in that size to try on took the heat out of the moment and made me realize that I don't really need another pair of running shoes now that I have all the bases covered. It's more likely that I will end up buying a couple of pairs for the kids, now that they make them in their size.

I didn't leave the shop empty handed, though. They offer osteopathy, massages and pilates as well as a lot of other techniques which I hadn't heard of so I bought my wife an introductory session to hopefully help with the back problems she suffers from. If her experience is favourable, I may even go myself.

Criticized Mass

critical mass

n.

1. The smallest mass of a fissionable material that will sustain a nuclear chain reaction at a constant level.

2. The amount of matter needed to generate sufficient gravitational force to halt the current expansion of the universe.

3. An amount or level needed for a specific result or new action to occur: "The sudden national uproar over drugs and drug abuse has reached politically critical mass in Washington" (Tom Morganthau).

According to Wikipedia, there are around 300 Critical Mass cycling movements around the world. However, from the Ciclismo Urbano website I counted 37 in Spain alone. The idea is to challenge the status quo by encouraging thousands of people to get on their bikes and reclaim the streets from cars. The first Critical Mass movement was held, perhaps unsurprisingly, in San Francisco in 1992. After my successful foray into the centre of Madrid by bike, I thought I would check out when the next "Masa Crítica Madrid" was being held.

Now, I am of the opinion that if you want to provoke change, you need two things: (1) a message that your target audience will understand and hopefully accept and (2) a way of transmitting that message. It's clear that thousands of cyclists parading through the streets is certainly an effective way of catching people's attention (especially if they are naked) but it is the first point that is more critical, if you'll excuse the pun.

So I was pretty dismayed to read the comments following the last Bici Crítica, that leaves from Cibeles at 8 pm on the last Thursday of every month. Apparently there was an altercation with a car driver that resulted in his rear window being smashed. According to a witness, the driver had been driving recklessly, putting in danger some of the cyclists. His summing up comment was

          "Lamentablemente, parece que muchas veces nos preocupan más unos cristales rotos que la violencia contra las personas."

          "Unfortunately, it seems that we are more worried about a few broken windows than violence against people."

While his sentiment is perfectly understandable, the action completely undermines the whole Critical Mass idea - in particular, point (1) above - and therefore the whole point of being "in danger" in the first place. The conclusion that people less impassioned by vehicles of the two wheeled variety are bound to come to is that this is precisely the reason why bikes should not be allowed to be ridden on the road in the first place.

If this weren't enough, then, for some inexplicable reason (at least, no one who has posted a comment has been able to explain it) they decided to ride on the A2, which is a motorway. It may be true that you have to go to great lengths to avoid going on motorways - as I did to get into town last night - but the solution is not to allow bikes to ride on motorways but rather to provide convenient alternatives.

In short, I believe that the best way to instigate change through these kind of social movements is to do it by the book and demonstrate how cumbersome and nonsensical the current rules are. What would Gandhi do? :-)

Zen and the art of bicycle maintainance

As this sticker spotted in a local bike shop shows, Madrid is not very bike friendly

I want the t-shirt!

The best thing about Madrid in August is that it is a ghost town and that means that the roads are almost safe to cycle on. I had to go into town to pick up a piece of carbon for my triathlon bike (more on this later) so I had the slightly crazy idea of going there on my road bike from work. There may be less traffic but it is still not a good idea (quite apart from being illegal) to go on any of the motorways which are the obvious connections between where I work (Boadilla del Monte) and the Local Bike Shop (Ciclos Delicias) in town. I've wondered for a long time whether it is possible to get past the mess of spaghetti below:

Google Maps helps a great deal, of course, but this area has been heavily redeveloped recently so a lot of the maps are hopelessly out of date as you can see just by looking at the difference between the aerial shot and the roads, which I'm not even 100% sure are the actual ones. The other difficulty is that it can be very hard to spot fences or security gates on an aerial map. Finding a route is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle that you solve piece by piece. Every so often I work out a new section and the pieces start to join up. I was very pleased when I was able to finally put all the pieces together and get to the other side of the road - even though it meant sneaking through a gap in a fence and then crossing a deserted University Campus. This is the solution I came up with:

The piece of carbon I needed is a kind of "stem" or "nose cone" which effectively raises the handlebars on my tri bike by 3 cm. Although I feel as though I am gradually getting used to the very low and aggressive position I currently have dialled in, I should probably admit to myself that I would struggle to maintain it for 2 and a half hours and the whole point of getting the tri bike was to feel more comfortable in the aero position. Of course, the temptation is to push the envelope and try to get as aero as possible but I have to take into account that (a) I am not pedalling fast enough for it to make as much as a difference as it would make to a pro triathlete and (b) I may lose more minutes on the run than I save on the bike. In any case, the sensible thing to do is to try it out and see how much difference it makes. If it is noticeably more comfortable then I'll stick with it until a few months before the race and try lowering it progressively (which you can do with a combination of nose cones and arm rest spacers - annoyingly, the screws are not provided and I'll have to try to source them from a hardware store).

It's actually surprisingly heavy considering how light the bike is overall

Lastly, I've finally got around to doing a bit of an M.O.T. on my mountain bike. The brakes were rubbing a little on the back so I took it to Mr Schmit in Pozuelo, near where I live. One look at the chain and the mechanic said it had stretched to the point of being off the scale and so needed replacing. A bit like an old married couple that grows old together, the chain and the sprockets get used to each other so that - even if they are working well - if you replace the chain then you need to replace the sprockets otherwise the chain will skip. Then, of course, I found that the chain jumped every time I started off because the middle chain ring was also worn down. So, in the end, I had to have pretty much the whole drive chain replaced! I was impressed that the mechanic noted the ever so slight rubbing of the brakes and a bit of give in the pedals after riding it for just 100 metres. (And I don't think this was the equivalent of the plumber who maintains your boiler finding all kinds of things to replace.) Now the bike rides like it was brand new.

Today I did something I have never done before. I came to work on the bike, changed behind a bush and started work without having a shower! Shock horror! With the time saved going down to the gym and back up again, as well as the optimized route based on intelligence from last night's reconnaissance mission, I was at my desk at the same time I would have been (if not before) had I come in by car.