Air conditioning in gyms

(Gets on hobby horse).

There must be some kind of standard for air conditioning in gyms but I have yet to find it; so far all I have found is someone else (who also happens to be based in Madrid) asking the same question. Today, I made the mistake of trying to do relatively long series (15 minutes) on the treadmill at work and got completely overheated. It may be that it was just an excuse to stop but it was very unpleasant. How can the gym be full in August? Aren't people supposed to be on holiday? Or maybe that's it, they are on holiday and have decided to come to the gym to work out. It was noticeably cooler to run outside where the sun was beating out a respectable 30 degrees Celsius and so I finished my workout on the running track. That, surely, is an indication that the temperature of the air con is too high.

One day I will take a thermometer along and measure how hot it gets where I am running. It definitely gets distinctly more uncomfortable when other people are running next to me and especially if it is a full house. I've had complaints (not to my face, of course) about the amount that I sweat, in spite of my efforts to clean up afterwards. What can I do? Even if I went naked I'd still be too hot and then there would be even more complaints.

The answer is that the cardiovascular machines, like the spinning bikes, should be in a separate room or divided from the weights section (although I also sweat a lot when doing weights). Either that or people who feel cold should wear jerseys for f's sake. I know it's nice to show off your muscles but there are plenty of warm, skin-tight garments available these days.

Armed with my measurements I'll see if I can find some kind of norm (surely from another country like the United States because I very much doubt that one exists in Spain) that is being contravened. On the other hand, we are talking about the same body that organized a 5K race at 5pm in July a few years ago - this actually did break the rules for the maximum effective ("wet bulb") temperature that it is allowed for a running race - and the first two finishers ended up being hospitalized. It was the only race ever that I didn't manage to finish, almost collapsing only 200 meters from the finish line. There is a higher risk of heatstroke in shorter races because you tend to run much closer to your limit.

(Gets off hobby horse)

I am the Count, hahaha

I wonder if I am the only one who does this. Somehow I doubt it. When I am doing series (or anything mildly unpleasant and self-inflicted) I have ways of passing the time. In a race, for example, I will typically break it into three parts: the middle part is usually the part where I have to focus most because I am neither fresh, nor particularly near the finish line. When I am training I take this even further and start to think in terms of fractions. I've run one sixth, one fifth, a quarter, a third - halfway! I do this mainly because it keeps my brain busy as it is surprisingly hard to do fractions when most of your blood is anywhere but in the brain. Then I complicate things by thinking thinks like, "I'm a third of the way there, now I only have to run - what is it - a sixth? - to get to halfway, and a sixth is half the distance I've already run". Once I get past the halfway mark, then it's easier to trick myself because each milestone (less than a third to go, less than a quarter, etc) comes by quicker than the one before it. Maybe there is some science behind it and we actually perceive time on a logarithmic scale... One particular thought that invariably comes to mind after I have been running for 11 minutes and 34 seconds (and will no doubt always happen to you from now on if you continue reading) is that 11:34 is "Hell" upside down. When I get to the final minute, I start counting down in seconds. What I notice is that, if I visualize a clock counting down in my head then I am surprisingly accurate; as soon as I start counting the seconds in my head, however, I get ahead of the clock, counting more quickly the more I am suffering...

I'd be interested to hear what strategies other people use to get through a tough session.

De Rodríguez

I am, as the Spanish say, "de Rodríguez" this week. It means being at work / home, while the family is on holiday. Actually the expression comes from the idea that an adulterous couple would check in under a false name at a hotel (e.g., Mr & Mrs Rodríguez). I think I'll just stick to taking advantage of the extra free time to do my training comfortably, to read some books and watch some trashy films. The week hasn't got off to a terribly auspicious start, after I found my son's only goldfish at the bottom of the tank this morning.

Last week was a recovery week, or a week that was substantially easier than the ones before it (or this week, for that matter). Still, I did find the weights circuit on Friday a bit of a killer. The routine was to do 4 circuits of 12 lifts at 60% of maximum and then to do 40 lifts (at a lower resistance, of course) 30 seconds after finishing the 4th set of each exercise. The first 10 lifts feel stupidly easy but then the fatigue creeps up insidiously and the last 10 are an absolute b*astard. I could hardly walk to the next exercise! I also did a circuit of jumping and skipping type exercises - which also looks like a walk in the park until you try it - and I felt that it translated into my running more crisply, although it was probably just my imagination.

These days I notice that I feel a bit stiff, especially in my feet, when I first wake up. I tend to have to hobble slightly to the bathroom until my feet warm up. Also my knee (torn meniscus) gives me a bit of gip in the morning and I have the sensation that I am placing more of my weight on the inside of my foot of that leg than the other; when I consciously correct for this, the slight pain (and corresponding limp) goes away so I suppose that is a good thing. Again, I don't have any problems with the knee while running, only walking in conventional shoes. Another thing I have noticed is that almost every time I start a run - unless it has been a day or two since I last ran - is that my feet feel very tired the first few minutes of the run, until I get going. In the past I probably would have fought against this and caused some kind of injury but now I just go with the flow and so far, after less than 5 minutes they are back to their springy, responsive and pain-free selves. As I've said before, I never stretch but I do believe in warming up (and cooling down). The first kilometer I run tends to be at around 10-11 kph (5:30-6:00 minutes per kilometer) and this seems to be enough for me. If I'm running series, my coach always explicitly adds a low intensity run of about half an hour beforehand. Rather than thinking that this is going to make running the series even harder, I always remember that it will probably help me hit my target heart rate sooner. If I tried to hit 180 bpm straight off the bat, I'd have to run like the clappers and the subsequent series would show a significant depreciation in speed.

Running really is a drug (not a spelling mistake for "drag"). We drove up to Asturias on Saturday and I only had a 30 minute run in my training plan - that I could easily have skipped as my wife pointed out - but it kept gnawing away at me and, in the end, at a market that we were visiting, I slipped into my running kit and ran down tothe nearest beach and back while my family were watching a competition of "escansiando" cider (pouring from a great height on to the edge of a glass, to make the cider effervesce. (By the way, I'm successfully abstaining from alcohol, even cider which I absolutely love.) I felt so much better after that run, it was scary. I can think of worse addictions to have, though.

Bike fitting

I used to be skeptical about bike fitting until I paid up and did one myself; now I am VERY skeptical about bike fitting. I'm not going to mention any names (unless you get in contact with me directly) because bad reviews and complaints have a tendency to reproduce like rabbits on the internet and end up being taken out of context.

The thing is, I'm planning to buy a triathlon (aero) bike not only because I think it will make me go faster - which is always nice - but because I'm hoping to avoid the severe back ache I had for two weeks after doing the Ironman. Bike fitting is about finding the best compromise between aerodynamics, application of power and comfort. With my current bike this compromise is somewhat restrictive. The first part of the bike fitting involved being "fitted" on my current bike so that, not only could I get the best out of it, but the idea was to get recommendations of triathlon bikes that would suit me best and - most importantly - be advised on what size frame to go for. The last thing I want to end up doing is shedding a whole load of cash on yet another bike only to find that I am just as uncomfortable (and just as slow). All the different triathlon frames have different characteristics and vary how forward you are with respect to the cranks (seatpost angle) as well as the length (reach) and height (stack). So if you have relatively short legs with respect to your torso you'll want a bike with a longer reach for example.

First of all I got on my current bike (mounted on a turbo trainer to measure my power output) and some measurements were taken with a kind of protractor in order to determine my optimum seat height. Since I would be buying a triathlon bike it seemed to make sense to set up the road bike for a road position: this resulted in lowering the seatpost by about 3 millimeters (at a cost of about €50 per millimeter being the only adjustment that was made). To be honest I think that I am perfectly capable of sensing where the optimum seat height is but hey, it's nice to have it confirmed by an expert. If I decide to ride with the aerobars on this bike I'll have to raise the seatpost by those 3 millimeters again. There was a screen in front of me spitting out wattage numbers that no-one seemed to give any importance to but it certainly looked impressive and technical.

Well who cares about the old bike anyway? What I was really interested in was choosing the most suitable triathlon bike for my body shape. I expected the fitters to have tables of measurements from all the major manufacturers, all converted into some consistent format. Instead it was a case of me suggesting a brand that I thought was "cool" and the fitter looking on the website at the quoted dimensions and saying that it was too long, too short, too aggressive, too relaxed. What really annoyed me was that, in many cases, I knew more about the bikes in question than the supposed expert. In any case, he was basing my ideal measurements on my road bike with no clever adjustments to account for passing from a road position to an aero position or anything like that. I couldn't shake off the idea that I was being goaded in to buying a custom bike. These bikes (made by Guru) are carbon fiber bikes that are made to measure and are as expensive as that sounds. Don't get me wrong, they look amazing but if there is an off-the-shelf bike out there that fits me, then my money would go much further on the groupset and the wheels, for example. The point is, how can I be sure that the measurements were taken well enough for even a custom bike to be a good fit? I mean, they took a photo with their iPhone of me standing next to a screwdriver (for scale) so that they could supposedly get any measurements they needed, so I wasn't exactly filled with confidence. Bizarrely, the fitter also offered me a second hand Giant Trinity Advanced SL0 that belongs to Virginia Berasategui, a Basque professional triathlete, in size "S" for small! (I'm 6"2).

Anyway, the reason I post this now is because I came across a very interesting article in Triathlon Plus, written by Chris Boardman (British Olympic Gold Medalist in cycling). If bike fitting seems to me a bit like the black art of voodoo then it was refreshing to see someone - and not just anyone, mind - demystifying the whole bike fitting process. There are some very practical suggestions for how you can improve the fit yourself. Here's a link to the article.

When something is too good to be true...

...it's often simply NOT. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon this advert

As you can see, it's a pretty good deal €1,650 for about €5,000 of ex-demo bike. I was so excited that I didn't even notice until much later the laughably bad Spanish in the advert (Giant Trinity Advanced was translated literally as "Gigante Avancado de Trinidad"). I was sure it must have sold already at that price and I was kicking myself for not having googled "giant advanced trinity madrid" or "gigante avancado de trinidad" for that matter. You can imagine my delight when I got an email to say that it was still on offer but he didn't answer my question about whether the seat post had already been cut, instead saying it had only ever been used on asphalt roads... This got me very suspicious - who would ride such a beauty on anything but an asphalted road? So I googled his email address (joseluisjimenez1974@hotmail.com) and a number of forum topics popped up in everything from saxophones to mountain bikes, all of which were warning of a con. Amazingly he hadn't bothered to change his email address. It's actually just possible that he is really called José Luis Jiménez and was born in 1974 although I would expect his Spanish to be much better.

So then I got this reply, which was identical to the ones that had appeared on the forums:

hola, mi novia es inglesa y vivimos aqui en inglaterra. quiero vender la bicicleta en espana porque la tengo desde alli, fue comprada en espana y tengo los documentos y la garantia desde alli. si quieres comprar yo te la puedo enviar con una mensajeria pero no voy a hacer contrembolso porque hace unas semanas antes, un comprador me dijo que me va a comprar la bicicleta y que solo va a usar contrembolso, yo acepte porque soy una persona de palabra, he enviado la bicicleta a el pero cuando la empresa fue en su direccion para entregarlo, sorpresa, nadie abrio la puerta y su telefono fue siempre cerrado, la empresa ha intentado durante varios dias pero nada. y asi yo he pagado los gastos de envio para mandar la bicicleta y tambien para recibirla devuelta. yo soy un hombre serio, tengo 37 anos, un hermoso restaurante aqui en londres y creame que para mi el tiempo es muy precioso. te digo del principio que la bicicleta no tiene ningun defecto ocultado ( se puede ver en las fotos del anuncio), lo compre nueva, fue usado solo varias veces, tengo factura de compra, creame que la vendo solo porque no la uso mas, trabajo mucho y no tengo tiempo. si quieres comprarla vamos a utilizar una empresa de envios que yo he utilizado antes y creo que es bastante buena para envios internationales porque tienen gastos de envio muy aceptable. ellos tienen un servicio muy practico para las compra-ventas por internet que yo he usado antes y fue muy satisfecho. ellos trabajan asi:
- yo te voy a enviar la bicicleta como usted quieres, envios normal (7-10 dias) o envios express (3-4 dias) cuando usted estas listo para comprarla;
- despues la paqueteria se pondra en contacto con usted con los detalles sobre envio y sobre como debes hacer el pago;
- usted vas a hacer el pago a la empresa de envio;
- despues, usted vas a recibir la bicicleta y tienes 3 dias para comprobarla y decidir si vas a guardarla;
- si estas contento y quieres guardarla entonces usted vas a mandar la confimacion la empresa, yo voy a recibir el pago y todo esta hecho.
- en en caso que por algun razon no quieres guardar la bicicleta, no te gusta o por cualquier otro razon, usted vas a recibir el pago devuelta inmediatamente y yo tambien la bicicleta, pero yo conosco mi bici y estoy seguro vas a guardarla.
asi mi companero, si estas deacuerdo con todo por favor mandame los datos para el envio, nombre, direccion, ciudad, codigo postal, numero de telefono y si estas preparado manana mismo voy a preparar la bicicleta para el envio. tambien necesito saber como quieres el envio, por express o envios normal. si prefieres el envio normal, yo voy a pagar los gastos de envio. lo siento que te escribo tanto, pero necesito un cliente serio para vender la bicicleta. espero requesta. gracias

The sheer length of it would have been enough to ring a few warning bells. As I can't be bothered to translate it myself and it is Googlespanish anyway, here it is Google translated back into English:

hello, my girlfriend is English and live here in England. I want to sell the bike in spain because I have from there, was purchased in Spain and I have the documents and the guarantee from there. if you buy me I can send you the courier with but I will not do because it contrembolso few weeks ago, a buyer told me that I will buy the bike and will only use contrembolso, I accepted because I am a man of my word I sent the bike to him but when the company was in the delivery address, surprise, no one opened the door and his phone was always closed, the company has tried for several days but nothing. and so I paid the cost of shipping the bike and also to receive back. I am a serious man, I have 37 years, a fine restaurant here in London and believe me that my time is very precious. I say the principle that the bike has no hidden defect (seen in photos of the ad), buy it new, it was used only several times, I have proof of purchase, believe that the band just because they use it more, work and I have much time. if you want to buy we will use a shipping company I have used before and I think it's good enough for shipping internationales shipping because they are very acceptable. they have a very practical service for buying and selling online that I've used before and was very satisfied. They work like this:- I'm going to send the bike as you want, normal delivery (7-10 days) or express shipping (3-4 days) when you're ready to buy;- After the parcel will contact you with details on shipping and how you make the payment;- You're going to make payment to the shipping company;- Then you're going to get the bike and you have 3 days to check and decide whether to keep it;- If you are happy and want to save then you'll send the confimacion the company, I'm going to get paid and everything is done.- On if for some reason do not want to put your bike, you do not like or any other reason, you'll get paid immediately and I also returned the bike, but I conosco my bike and I'm sure you save it.so my companion, if they agree with all please send me the data for shipping, name, address, city, zip code, telephone number and your readiness tomorrow I'm going to prepare the bike for shipping. also need to know how you want the shipment by express or regular delivery. if you prefer the normal shipping, I'll pay the shipping. I'm sorry I write so much, but I need a serious customer to sell the bike. I hope request. thanks

If you can't be bothered to read that either - and I don't blame you - the point is that the bike isn't in Madrid after all. If you stop and think for a minute, you would probably never have responded to a second hand advert in another country (unless it was via some website of international repute like ebay). Here's the rub: you pay a (what turns out to be bogus) shipping company to ship the bike to you and then you can track your delivery on a (bogus) website... What I'm not clear about is whether you get conned for just the shipping charge or for the price of the bike (plus the shipping). I guess he has two versions of the con, one for really desperate and gullible people and another for the more wary. Even if he just gets €75 a pop, it's not bad business considering he has very low overheads. Also it's too small an amount for anyone to really bother about trying to claw back - I expect most people would be too embarrassed even to try. 

I gave him the following address but evidently his Spanish was better than I had been expecting because I didn't hear from him again...

          Calle Atomarporculo, 34

          Gilipollasdemierda 28667

          Madrid

          Spain 

In his message he says that he is a very busy man and that his time is very precious - it's a shame that he has no respect for anyone else's time (or money). Being a good upstanding citizen and all that, I sent an email to the website which had published the advert to warn them that it was a con and that there were likely many others by the same person. Of course I didn't hear anything back from them.

The peak/end rule

I was reading "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris last night when I came across an interesting finding. To give you some background, the book (which is well worth reading whether you agree with his premises or not) argues that morality should not be the exclusive domain of religion but that science actually has things to say about it. The book revolves around the concept of well being.

In a study it was found that patients undergoing a colonoscopy (in the days before anesthetics were used), the patients suffered less and were therefore more likely to come back for a routine checkup if the colonoscopy tube was left inserted a few minutes longer than was strictly necessary, artificially prolonging the procedure at a low level of discomfort. The conclusion of this study (and other similar studies) is that our perceived suffering depends much more on the peak suffering and the suffering experienced at the end, than on the duration.

I thought that there might be a way to translate this to training and racing. In the case of a race, it is clear that our memory of those races which we have either won or completed in a personal best time was that we hardly suffered, compared to those races which were a disappointment and we remember as being a living hell. It's hard to say which is the cause and which is the effect: perhaps we won those races because we were in the "zone" and so focused on performing that we didn't notice the pain and were therefore somehow able to push harder. Still, I think it is more interesting to apply the principle to training. A direct analogy with the colonoscopy would imply that we should run for a few minutes at low intensity after completing a series of high intensity workouts, for example. Of course, we should do this anyway, to "cool down" or - more specifically - stimulate the aerobic metabolism to oxidize the lactic acid circulating in our bloodstream.

It's an interesting idea and it may be possible to get further insights on how to better tolerate workouts or, to be more precise, to have a more agreeable memory of them so that we are more motivated to repeat them.

Tattoo envy

I was just perusing a triathlon forum when I came across a post by someone showing off their latest tattoo with lots of very complementary replies. I was amazed to see that it was the tattoo that I had designed for myself by the awesome artist Steven Barrett but then bottled out of having inked. I feel a bit strange to think that it could have been my leg in the photo below because it does look pretty cool, but also I suppose it would have pissed me off if I had had it done to see that someone else had copied it (actually, the final design had a cap on the runner - I didn't like to be reminded of my encroaching hair loss)... On the other hand, I'm happy that it has gone to a good home, so to speak!

Ceci n'est pas ma jambe

 At the weekend we went to a park with water slides and I couldn't help noticing just how many people had tattoos. I'm convinced that about two out of every three adults had one, and that was only counting those that were in visible places. There were some striking ones, of course, but mostly they just seemed to be random drawings that were unlikely to have a life changing significance for their bearers; I almost found myself respecting more the old school "Mum" or "Wife's name here" tattoos which at least mean something. I don't want to come across all snooty and elitist - and maybe that's just what I am being - but I have to say, I was quite glad that I wasn't wearing a tattoo myself.