Cobwebs

I'm nearly two weeks into my training, under the guidance of Cadence coach Brian Walton, and it's immensely gratifying to feel the stiffness, in my lower back and knees, melting away. The workouts have been basics: a mix of 45-minute base runs, two-hour bike rides (once per week) and masters swim workouts. I'm sure a physiologist could explain it to me, but I find it compelling how I had assumed all the stiffness I was feeling, not to mention having thrown my back out a three times in three months, was simply a matter of being older. At this point, my diet hasn't been anything to brag about: it's been scattershot, doing well half the time, and the other half the time missing lunch quite often and drinking an extra cup of coffee to fill the void (a fiction, of course). Regardless, the consistent mix of training, with an occasional off-day, seemingly has swept out the stiffness.

Brian has asked me to look for an Olympic-distance race scheduled around the end of February. I said sure thing, and felt the instant zap of adrenalin when you sense a race on the horizon. I said, "That's not too far away," to which Brian responded (we were talking on the phone, but I could see the guy smiling as he said this), "No, it isn't." The subtext of which was immediately clear to me--the prospect of a race commitment puts the workout of today into greater focus. Of course, it also makes it fun. "That's the magic of it," I replied. Indeed, you can always count on the omnipotent motivational power of flicking a stamped envelope containing a race entry into the mailbox.

Comeback Theory

In the midst of week one, grinding the gears back into training. It's not pretty. I'm like a rusted-out Datsun from 1979.

Coach Brian Walton, and the rest of the Cadence coaching gang, use trainingpeaks.com to transmit information back and forth to their athletes. It's some high end tech, especially if you have the tools to upload workout data from the various machines you train with. Like heart rate monitors and Computrainers. I've never used this level of technology. I have used heart rate monitors in the past, but never the uplink-to-computer bling. I have a new Polar 625x heart-rate monitor that I hope to get rigged up to a computer this weekend. The same with a Computrainer. I've never been so geeked out in my life. I'm riding a Kuota Kebel, which I'm looking to sweeten with a Polar power meter. I'll be a two-legged exercise physiology lab.

There's a lot of hype, pro and con, on the virtues of super technology. As in anything, it's just a meaningless pile of hardware unless there's brainpower and effort being circulated through it. Clearly though, technology has made long-distance coaching work. Coaches and athletes emailing workout plans and reports back and forth was the first level. Cadence is an example of the high-end possibilities now being explored by coaches. You get specificity and accountability. The machines don't bend the truth. If you run with your running computer for six miles at 8-minute pace with a heart-rate at 145, and the computers talk through an interface, the coach is going to know exactly what you did.

I saw a bit of what they're up to at the Cadence Kona Challenge in NYC a few weeks ago, where they picked six winners to coach throughout the year toward an Ironman (they also won tons of schwag, including a custom made carbon-fiber Cyfac tri bike). Using Computrainers, treadmills and specially written computer code and other wizardry, they get a detailed look at what you're doing on the bike. I haven't gone through their testing protocol yet, but the Kona Challenge athletes did, and went away with a composite look at their strengths, weaknesses, training zones and potential for improvement.

So this weekend I plan to spend time wiring together my little home-based exercise-phys lab. This week, the workouts Brian has been giving me are meant to get my body back into training without injuries. I would say it's especially good to have a coach be the architect of a return to training from a long, horrible layoff. As running coach Jack Daniels has written, one of the most common mistakes someone in my situation makes is trying getting back to quickly; the memories in the brain of being fit training hard seduce you into doing something stupid. With Brian coaching me, all I need to focus on is the workout that he has given me for the day and the preparations I need to make for the workout tomorrow. I just focus on getting it done. It's a relief.

Once more into the breach

I am the editor of Triathlete Magazine and I have a confession: While I can boast about having posted some decent running results in my life, as a triathlete I've pretty much been a hack. As a runner in the early to mid-1990s, I was extremely disciplined and focused in my training, my lone obstacle being the occasional injury (some light, some not so light) that would derail me. During that time, I worked with several coaches, and under their direction knocked out a series of decent PRs over a wide range of distances, from a 4:06 1500-meter run (as a 30-year-old) to a 2:38 marathon.

I started with Triathlete in 1996, and while I'd survived a number of races, from Wildflower to Escape From Alcatraz, I had never truly applied myself the way I had as a runner. And as I submersed myself in the sport as an editor, my training and racing was far more scattershot. It's now late 2007, and while I have to my credit five Ironman finishes, I have yet to work with a good coach, and I have yet to apply myself with the sort of discipline and energy I know I'm capable of. To sum up my five Ironmans: it was more about the beer after the race than anything.

And now, feeling a beat up and very out of shape at the age of 44, six-foot tall and cracking 200 lbs on my Tanita scale, my desire is to do see what working under a good coach and within a good program can do.

Right now I feel the following: overweight, stiff and with lower back and right knee grumblings. I feel tired, and after a long season of covering the sport of triathlon, I ironically feel the distant from the sport, farther away from feeling any bit of fitness than I have in some time.

In the past few months I've made two visits to the Cadence Cycling and Multisport center in New York City. It's one of the most remarkable creations I've come upon: I was expecting to see a high end bike shop, but what I in fact saw was a training center, open to triathletes of all levels, that one would expect would only be open to world-class athletes. Professional-level coaching, cutting-edge technology and a no-holds-barred approach to coaching and developing an athlete regardless of talent or age. Their services are expensive, for sure, but not surprising considering the quality and comprehensiveness they package.

A few days before the Hawaii Ironman, I met with Brian Walton, the head of Cadence coaching and a former elite cyclist from Canada. In a questionairre I had told Walton about the true state of my rock-bottom fitness level, and my desire to try and overhaul myself into a true Ironman triathlete. Not just a guy who goofs around with his training and serves up enough teeth-gritting to get through an Ironman, but to actually follow the Cadence program and see what I can come up with.

In addition to see what a high-quality triathlon program and the modern-day technologies that allow a coach like Walton to work with me from a long distance (Walton works out of the Philadelphia Cadence store; I live and work in San Diego), I hope to shed some insight on the process that the six winners of the Cadence Kona Challenge will be experiencing as they spend their training year's shooting for success in a North American Ironman competition (Triathlete Mag will be following their progress starting with an introduction in the January issue).

In this blog I will be reporting to you on the Cadence system, with all the high, hard-science and coaching experience that they'll mow through me with, and also the details of how this attempt at overhauling a junker goes.