Let it rain!

With the holiday season came our rainy season. We have been rather lucky to date with the weather and have not really had to make any accommodations for it. However, that all changed over the last couple of weeks as we have been hit by a series of heavy rainstorms. The picture of the lemon tree sums it up for me. The winters in Northern California are relatively mild in comparison to the UK. In fact it is so mild that we can grow our own lemons. Still it rains, and when it does, it can be heavy. This has made training a little more challenging. If it rains hard, I can cycle on my trainer in the garage, and running in the rain is OK so long as it is not too heavy. Swimming sounds like it would be the least affected, but in reality is probably the hardest hit in that I have to cycle to the pool. So far, I have only had one major soaking but I am sure that there are more to come.
On a more upbeat note, I have completed 12 weeks of training and met my first fundraising goal of $1000. The next goal is $3500 by the end of February, so I will be in touch soon!

92 g of Protein/day

I think that I might have previously mentioned that I was undergoing a nutritional assessment so that I can ensure that I am in good nutritional shape for my training program. This consisted of two visits to a specialist clinic in Walnut Creek where they I supplied blood, urine and sputum samples, completed a bunch of questionnaires and was wired up to a bioimpedence device. I got the results of the assessment this week which were quite interesting. One of the most suprising findings was that my basal metabolic rate was lower than expected. Basically, this tells you the amount of energy that you need if you were to sit around and do nothing all day. Think of it as a typical day in the office. Anyhow, my BMR is about 1800 cals, 200-300 less than was expected for my size. The information is really important in that I will use this plus the energy that I expend during training to figure out how much to eat every day. For example I burn up 1100 cals during a 2 hour training session today (my groovy Polar heart rate monitor calculates this for me), so I need to eat 2900 cals if I don't want to waste away.
Another important piece of info that I obtained, was that I need to eat about 92g of protein/day to ensure that I can repair and build new muscle. This isn't that easy to do. I have started supplementing my diet with protein shakes using whey protien. However a scoop of whey protien only has 14g of protein.
As you may be able to tell, I am becoming a little obsessive about this! It has made me realise that I really don't have much idea about what I am putting into my mouth everyday. Who knew that a slice of wholemeal bread has 5g of protein? I see a steep learning curve ahead!

Treasure Island Sprint Triathlon

On Sunday we participated in the first triathlon of our program. TNT set up what was advertised as a Sprint Triathlon on Treasure Island (no there isn't any) for the South and North Bay Ironteams. It was a beautiful cold (for SF) winter day. The event was supposed to be a 600m swim, 12 mile ride and 3 mile run. In reality it turned out to be a 1000m swim with a 1/2 run to the transition area and then a 12 mile ride and 3 mile run. Our coach thought that it was better we didn't know how long the swim was as it might freak some of us out! Anyhow, I was pleased with my performance. The water was rather cold but you get numb to it after a couple of minutes. The start was a bit scary in that you are surrounded by the hectic random movement of other swimmers limbs. I took a few hits but overall, I survived unscathed. The swim did feel long at the time but I managed to swim both laps of the course without stopping once! Getting out of the water was fun as I was mildly dizzy. It didn't help that we had to climb a large ladder to get off the beach and run 1/2 mile to the transition area in our wet suits (see top picture).
The transition went well and I was off on my bike pretty quickly. Raj estimated that I was about 30th (of about 80) at this stage. The cycle route was flat but had lots of turns which made for a lot of slowing down and speeding up. The ride was uneventful. I managed to pull back quite a few cyclists and was only overtaken once on the three laps of the course. I completed the ride in 38 minute with an average speed of 19 mph.
The transistion to the run was quick and I was off running the two laps of the course. The one big problem that I had with the whole event was that my feet were still rather numb while I was running. This is a strange feeling! It also makes it hard to get into a fluid running style. Despite a reasonable run, I did not feel like I was in my groove until towards the end of the run. Anyhow, I finished comfortably in 9th place! I must admit to be a little proud of myself in that I would have been happy coming in somewhere in the top half of the field.
The training program is clearly effective as I felt fine at the end, and had no aches or pains the following day. However, I did have a nap on Sunday afternoon, although I suspect that this was because we had to get up so early.

A big thanks to Raj and Graeme for coming out to support me and helping with the event.