Ben Nevis and Beyond

We are now in the build phase of our training program which consists of four week training cycles of increasing duration. Each week there is an increase in the mileage and duration of each activity until the fourth week when we have what is called a recovery week where we take things a little easier. The next cycle starts the following week with another step up. This week was supposed to be a recovery week. However, at times it didn't feel much like one. On Saturday we set off for a ride in the hills around Woodside, south of San Francisco. Our program called for a 2 hour hilly ride followed by a 30 minute trail ride. Our ride captain had other ideas. He offered us an enticing alternative 50 mile ride over the hills to the coast and back which most of the group opted to do. Well, that was until we tackled the first hill. After a 40 minute climb up Old La Honda Rd, most of the group decided that they would take the shorter route avoiding any further climbs. About 12 of us pushed on. The nice thing about big climbs is that you usually get a good decent to look forward to. This was no exception. The decent to the coast seemed endless depsite us maintaining an average speed over 25 mph. At one point, I managed to break 40 mph.
In the cycling world, what goes down usually has to go back up, and that is where the fun started. It took an hour at an average speed of about 6 mph to get back up to the top of the ridge. The road was essentially a series of endless switchbacks that climbed ahead of us for a far as you could see. It was also a single lane in a poor state of repair. Fortunately traffic was light which is just as well. After about 30 minutes my back started to ache. By 45 minutes I was ready to get off my bike and lay on my back but I foolishly battled on.
In all we climbed over 4500 feet. To help put this into perspective, Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the UK, is about 4400 feet high. Mt Diablo, the tallest mountain in the Bay Area is about 3800 feet. Check out the profile of the ride above.

Double-brick anyone?

Sunday's coached training session was a landmark in our training program. The double-brick is a step towards the infamous triple brick which we will undertake in the summer. A brick, if you are wondering, is a bike ride followed by a run. A double-brick is a ride-run-ride-run session. To add to the fun, we had to get ourselves out to Danville for a 08:00 start. Never having been to Danville, nor having any idea where it was, meant that I had to get myself out of bed at 6 AM the morning after my birthday party. For some reason nobody seemed to want to go home on Saturday night despite professing to that the fact that they usually went to bed at 10 PM. Anyhow, I didn't feel too bad getting up which I put down to the extra ice cream that I had in preparation.
Danville, is a quiet suburban town on the East Bay a little west of Mt Diablo. It is cold there. The temperature was at least 10 deg F lower that it was when I left San Francisco which made for a rather chilly ride. Still, the surrounding countryside is rather pretty and the roads were quiet which made for a good ride. I remained a little cold for the whole ride as we were told to keep our pace down at 15 mph to simulate a long ride. Riding slower meant that my heart rate was below 100 bpm and I didn't generate any additional heat. After the first ride, we quickly tranisitioned into our running gear and hit the Iron Horse trail for a 40 minute run. Foolishly I hooked up with three of the fastest runners in the team and ended up running a hard 5 miles. My heart rate jumped from sub-100 to the low 140s where it stayed for the duration of the run. I vowed to ease off for the next run. The run was followed by an 80 minute spinning session which we did in the carpark on an Albertson's. Spinning is no easy option. It is like cycling with no stop signs or downhills. It has added hazzards such as one-legged cycling, which is supposed to build power, and invisible hills. The final run was quite nice in comparison. I hit the trail on my own for the first 20 minutes and hooked up with John G and Kim for the return leg. We ran maybe 1/2 min/mile slower that the way out which made all of the difference.
In all the session lasted about 5 hours and I felt pretty good at the end of it. My only concern was that I felt like I couldn't drink anymore sports drinks. I have been experimenting with a variety of drinks. The one that I used the most on Sunday was Sustained Energy which is widely used by triathletes. It has the advantage of being very calorific, and you can mix it up to give you 1000 cals in 750 mls. The downside is that it has the consistency of, and tastes like wallpaper paste. After drinking 1.5 litres of this, my stomach was telling me no more!

Half way to $7500!

This has been a good week for my fundraising efforts. I am pleased to announce that I have passed the 50% mark to reach $4,000. I was hoping to make this sum by the end of February but am relieved that it has come a little early. Many thanks to all of you that have made a donation. In fact, 32 people have sponsored me to date. Now, I just need another 25 to 30 people to help me get to my target of $7500.

San Francisco Half Marathon

Sunday February 5th, was not only the date for the Superbowl but also the San Francisco half marathon. This year Graeme and I ran it with Raj and Brandon who have done this on numerous occasions. The conditions were perfect. I had a reasonable run managing to keep a consistent rate of 8 minutes/mile, and finishing in 1 hour 44 mins. This was slightly faster than my last 1/2 marathon which I did last summer. Other than sore quads, I recovered from the event quite quickly. After a rest day on Monday, I had a hard pool session (2100 m) and I felt no ill effects.

On another note, I heard that I got a place in the escape from Alcatraz triathlon which is being held on June 4th. I had given up hope on this but my name was pulled on the final round of the lottery. It must be my lucky year as I had also been selected for the London Marathon (I have defered this until 2007). The escape from Alcatraz tri is famous for the 1.5 mile swim from Alcatraz. This isn't an easy task as the water is cold and choppy and there are strong currents. It is no suprise that few people ever managed to escape from the prison by swimming.

Pandemic Influenza

I spent Wednesday and Thursday of last week in DC at a conference on pandemic flu. To say the least, this was a fascinating but sobering experience. I was there because I have been asked to coordinate a supplemental publication based on the meeting which will be published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases later this year. One of the bonuses of this project was that I could coop the help of several of my friends who are also freelance medical writers, which made it quiite a social event.
The objective of the meeting was to generate recommendations for how state and local authorities could prepare for an influenza pandemic. It may not sound that interesting on the surface but it starts to get rather frightening when you start to realise the impact that a severe pandemic would have on all of us.
There were three pandemics in the 20th century (1918, 1957 and 1968). Of these the 1918 pandemic was the worst resulting in between 50 and 100 million deaths wordwide. To put that in context, approximately 40 million people have died from AIDS in the last 2 decades. The world population has grown by 3 times since 1918, so if the same type of pandemic occurred today, we might expect to see 180-360 million deaths.
What is particularly worrying about pandemic flu is that it can result in high death rates in otherwise healthy people. In contrast, seasonal influenza, which occurs every winter, kills about 1 million people worldwide but many of these are old.
The thing that really struck me was not that a pandemic could kill a lot of people but that it would have a devistating effect on all of us due to the disruption that it would cause. It is likely that every aspect of our society would be impacted by the large numbers of people that fell ill. Hospitals would be overwhelmed, and businesses would either grind to a halt or only operate at a greatly reduced level. The supply lines for industry would be thrown into chaos. Travel would be prohibited. Foods and medical supplies would be limited. We would not be able to rely on others to come to our aid as the the whole world would be similarly affected.
There is some hope! An infrastructure is being implemented to allow for the rapid manufacture of vaccines that would help protect at least some of the population. Antiviral drugs are being stockpiled which might help contain an outbreak or protect essential workers. However, I think that we all need to identify what we need to do to ensure that we are prepared to ride out the worst of it. At a minimum, I will be adding to our earthquake kit to ensure that we have enough food for at least 2 weeks. There is a lot information available if you want to read up on this. I would suggest starting at http://pandemicflu.gov/general/.