I’ve wanted to get into photography for awhile and recently I’ve become very inspired by Beth.  Being injured has provided me with a chance to try something new, though with work and the whole upcoming wedding thing, I haven’t been able to spend as much time with my new (to me) DSLR that I would have liked.  I bought it in July, right before Jordan raced in the NYC Triathlon.  Needless to say, the photos from NYC turned out pretty terrible.  It’s a long and gradual learning curve and I’m at the very bottom.  Gulliver is unsurprisingly my favorite subject and most cooperative.  Here are some shots from the last month, hopefully I’ll get the hang of it soon:

Athletes on their way to set up transition at the Nautica NYC Triathlon.

The podium at Nautica NYC Triathlon.

Gulliver lounging on the deck in the sun.

And as for the whole injury thing, I’m out for 2010 but have recently started running again, albeit 8 minutes every 3 days. It’ll be a long road back, but I’m really looking forward to racing again in 2011.  Maybe I’ll see that NYC podium from a different view next year…that would be something. =)

Yesterday I launched an updated version of the Powder7 homepage.  Powder7.com celebrated its first birthday recently (though we celebrated several previous birthdays under the MileHighAthletic name) and it was in need of a little refreshing.

I updated the graphics on the frontpage to include a very underrated but important element of e-commerce sites: people and faces.  A disadvantage to online shopping as opposed to traditional in-store shopping is that customers usually respond more favorably when they interact with a person.  This is the reason why you see a lot of “live chat” options on large e-commerce sites and also why we strongly encourage our customers to call or email us with any questions they have.  Human interaction is powerful, and though displaying a photo of a stranger isn’t quite interaction, it still provides a more personal feel than product alone.

Before:

After:

What are your thoughts?  What can we do better?

Next up for Powder7: 2011 inventory!  We’re anxiously awaiting our new 2011 skis from Nordica, Head, Icelantic, Dynastar, and Line as well as apparel from Patagonia.  Any day now…

I happened across this ad on slowtwitch.com, the web’s go-to source for all things triathlon.

Most people probably haven’t thought of Avia since the early-90s when they were known for their fitness/aerobics and basketball shoes.  Over the past several years they have made a big push in the triathlon market with some success.  My fiancee (also a pro triathlete) used to train in a pair of their running shoes and actually really liked them.  I have never tried a pair.

The ad is attention-grabbing for sure, but for all the wrong reasons.  What does crashing my bike and losing my front teeth have to do with what I wear on my feet?  Even if these shoes help me recover, from say workouts, how are they going to help a disfigured face?

A few bullet points to summarize my thoughts on the ad:

- close-ups of faces are never a good idea.

- You never want to associate a product with an accident, especially when bike crashes are all too much of a reality for triathletes.  There has been a lot of hit and run car-bike accidents in the news lately and it isn’t something taken lightly.

- It took me a second to realize that the image under the face was a tooth, maybe because the girl lost her front teeth and that tooth is a molar (with some tartar build-up to boot), but hey, I’m no dentist.

- If you’re going to go ahead with the ad at least improve the photo editing.  It looks to me like the graphic artist drew a black square and placed it over the “missing teeth” in Photoshop.  Not too life-like, especially with the obvious fake pink blood on the other teeth.

- Why are we even thinking of teeth in an ad for an athletic product?

Alternate ads:

- Show an athlete in obvious pain after a tough workout (bent over, hands on knees on a track; cringing in an ice bath; or show typical recovery aides, and throw the shoes into the line-up with a quick line about how they work).  Also, if a model is in the ad, show enough of them so that they appear attractive!  I don’t know who the girl in this ad is, but I am willing to bet if it were a full body photo (or even 1/2 body) with just a few cuts and scrapes on her, this ad would have gone over a lot better.  (I’m not the only one who finds it disturbing.  There is a whole thread on the Slowtwitch message board about it.)

I’m also very surprised that Avia has not responded to the complaints and pulled the ad.  I’ve managed an advertising campaign on Slowtwitch and they are very easy to work with.  I’m sure if Avia wanted to create a new ad and swap it out (especially given the circumstances) Slowtwitch would be willing to do it.

I told Jordan by the time he gets home from Ixtapa he won’t recognize our yard.  In hindsight, this was an exaggeration.  The gardening books made it look so easy!

My new hobby started in March when things started to head south with my knees.  I loaded up on all sorts of seeds, starter kits, pots, and soil at the good ol Home Depot.  In April it was finally time to start growing my tomatoes inside in a front window, and within a week I was seeing results.  I loved gardening.  So easy!  Seed, dirt, water, sun, voila!  Recently the tomato seedlings started to outgrow their window set-up, so I started figuring out how to transplant them outside.  Our yard is strange, mostly woodchips with rocks underneath, no real soil, so I opted for the container route.

The tomatoes ready to be introduced to the great outdoors.

Happy in their new home.

Then the 50mph winds came that night, and snapped the plants in two.  I woke up at 3am to move them, but it was too late.

The aftermath. This was taken 2 days after the wind, hence why it looks so dry.

Good thing I have 10 more plants waiting to go!

I rearranged them, putting one in a planter in a safer location, and a few others in a makeshift garden bed.  Also in the garden bed (which I don’t think will actually work, because the soil isn’t deep) I planted chives, peppers, and green beans, all of which my parents successfully planted and cultivated in our backyard “patch” while I was growing up, thus serving is my subconscious inspiration.

The new set-up, and Gulliver caught mid-blink.

We’ll see how it goes.  It’s nice to do something to get outside, but I realize that I miss the whole moving around thing that comes with running and cycling.

I wish I could say I started Sunday’s race with a graceful dive off the side of the San Francisco Belle, but that would be a blatant lie.

I started with a bellyflop.

After the race Jordan said he had never seen me so nervous before a race. I was nervous for the race, nervous about how my knees would hold up on the rugged course, but more than anything I was nervous about how I would get off the boat.

It happened quickly. We were sitting around the boat when all of a sudden we gathered near the doorway and made our way onto the deck. I was one of the last pros out so I got the less-than-stellar position of second-to-last person all the way to the right. Everyone I wanted to be with was 15 feet to my left, 15 feet closer to shore. My plan was to make the decision on whether to dive or not a game-time one. The horn went off and I dove. Then I got scared, and mid-air changed the dive to a feet first jump that resulted in a bellyflop.

I recovered well from the subpar start and hammered as best I could. I caught a little pack and swam happily for a couple minutes, surrounded by white swim caps (pro men) and some pink swim caps (pro women). At one point I sighted and realized the feet I were on were none other than Jordan’s. I hoped I was having a great swim and he wasn’t having a bad one (turns out it was a mix of both). The water got choppy and rough for a bit and suddenly I was on my own. No longer able to play the remora I got to work and tried as hard as I could to chase down a pink cap far ahead. I never caught her and instead ended up towing along a pro guy the rest of the way to shore.

Usually my run to the first transition is hurting, but after a quick change into my old race flats (outfitted with curly laces!) I was able to run the ½ mile quickly, even passing two girls. It’s the first time in history that I’ve passed someone coming out of the swim.

Out on the bike I got passed by two girls about a mile and a half in and wasn’t able to keep them in sight for long. My bike fitness is improving, but apparently not enough to expect to ride with the big girls yet. I kept focused, only noticed one puppy the entire 18 mile ride, and tried not to do anything stupid when the TV camera motored up to me and stayed with me for about 10 minutes. I had some age group men catch up to me and managed to battle it out with a few for a good portion of the bike. I choked down 2 gels on the bike, one in the beginning and one with just a few minutes left, which provided me with plenty of energy for the 8 mile run.

I took T2 nice and leisurely, even taking time to put socks on. Normally I would never do this, but since the course was technical and sandy the last thing I wanted to deal with was a blister. My strategy was to take the run out hard, really push on the flat first 2 miles and deal with the rest of the course when it came. I’m not a good climber, I’m more of a flats/downhill type runner, so I wanted to have enough in me to use that to my advantage on those sections of the course. I loved the run. It was perfect for me. The tight, technical trail, running through the tunnel, the steep downhill…I loved it. My running shape has deteriorated in the last few weeks as my knees have gotten worse, but it didn’t matter: I was running on a high…by then I knew I was having a good race, I was within the top 10, the trail was absolutely incredible, and these were the last miles I would run for who-knows-how-long. I constantly told myself not to save an ounce, this was it, leave everything here.

And I did! I finished in 8th place, by far my best race to date. It was the hardest I’ve ever raced in a triathlon and afterward I was totally spent. Lying in bed that afternoon I ached like I’ve never ached before. I feel like I have finally figured out how to race a triathlon!

There’s usually a point in every race where I just want it to be done, I start to hate it, wonder what I’m doing out there when I could be enjoying a nice brunch, but that never happened in this race. I wanted to stay out in the water, I wanted to stay on the bike, and I didn’t want the finish line to come when I was running. …and I guess that makes sense, because as soon as the finish line came I was put on hiatus.

The hiatus wasn’t so bad on Monday, I was hurting so badly I don’t think I could have done much anyway. Now it’s been 3 days though and it’s getting ugly. I’m beyond antsy. All I want to do is be out training on my bike, getting my time trialing together.  In time…

Some nice company! An Olympic medalist and a couple world champions...

A big thanks to my Mom and Dad who flew out to San Francisco from NJ for their first triathlon spectating experience!  They took loads of great pictures — all of them in this post and all the ones uploaded to Flickr today.  Thanks guys!!  Maybe now you don’t think Jordan and I are so crazy for always having to squeeze in 2 training sessions per day when we visit??

I’m not really going away.  I’m just going away from training for a little while.

Last week I finally submitted to an MRI, and I got the results yesterday.  As it turns out, the cartilage on the back of my knee caps is wearing down and causing the mysterious pain I’ve been experiencing for the past 11 weeks.  I also have an agitated plica hovering around, providing further annoyance.  (If, like me, you have never before heard of a plica, check out the Wikipedia article here.)  The only cure is to rest my knees, so no running, no real cycling, and no real swimming.  I can spin easy with very little resistance and I can swim with a pull buoy.  With any luck, by the end of May the cartilage will have improved and I can introduce more activity.

The cause of all this is my increase in training over the winter.  I never felt like I was doing a lot, but I suppose I was, or at least a lot more than I was doing before.  In just a couple years to jump from running for 45 minutes to an hour each day to training for 3 hours a day might be considered a leap.  However, in all the time I have been running this is the first time I’ve had knee trouble, so that in itself is promising.  In  the future, I have to be mindful of my overall volume.  In the spring I started to take 1 day off every 10 or so days, and in the future I’ll probably drop that down to 1 day off every week and be really diligent about that, as I tend to get carried away and forget.

All in all, it’s a relief to finally know what is going on.  11 weeks is a long time to be in the dark, training half-heartedly hoping it disappears on its own.   I’m thankful that Matt Schneider at Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, the same PA that worked with Jordan on his knee last summer, took the time to get to the root of the problem and provide a reasonable healing plan.  He gave me the “OK” to race Escape from Alcatraz this weekend, saying that it’s my “going away party” and the rest period begins as soon as I’m across the finish line.

My plan for Alcatraz is to go all in on the swim and bike, and not save an ounce for the run.  If I’m having a good race I’ll be giddy enough to get through it fine, and if not I’ll be enjoying the view of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay.  It’s going to be fun and it’ll be an awesome experience, no matter what.  By way of this injury my swimming and cycling have improved a lot since Mazatlan, and even my worst days in the pool and on the bike aren’t flat-out awful anymore.  For the run, I’ll keep my race in Austin in the front of my mind and give it whatever I have because those are the last strides I’ll take for at least a month and I don’t want to save anything up.

Who knows when the “welcome back party” will be, hopefully in July sometime!  This definitely changes my plans for the season, but fortunately I haven’t registered for any races or arranged any travel beyond this weekend and I’m perfectly content to just roll with it and see what happens.

Now the real question…best pizza in San Francisco??

Sunday afternoon Gulliver and I went for a hike up on Lookout Mountain….to clear my head, forget about bad races, uncooperative knees, and to try and regroup for escaping from Alcatraz next weekend (if you aren’t familiar with triathlon it sounds like I will be attempting some sort of David Blaine stunt).  It was nice to amble around, no pace or heartrate to think about…just enjoy the scenery and realize how awesome it is that this is just minutes from my doorstep.  Here are some pics.  Jordan gave Gulliver a furcut last weekend, so he’s looking quite dapper…

Lots of fun training this weekend (and eating)…

Saturday

Jordan and I went up to Boulder to meet our friend Taylor and a few of his training partners for a group ride.  I signed on for a 2.5 hour jaunt through the plains just north of town.

I should have known better.  Every time I ride with Taylor it ends in a sufferfest.  He’s tortured me all over the place: Park City, Aspen, Hawaii, Moab (actually his wife was responsible for that one…), up the canyons outside of Golden, and today he lead to my demise in Longmont.

As usual, I went overboard in preparing for the 2.5 hour ride.  I filled not 1, but 2 bottles of water and packed no food.  The first hour 20 went by without incident, we rode out to Carter Lake.  I was 1/2 way through my 180 turn when “no no no let’s go around the lake and down the backside.”

“Won’t that be longer than the way we came?”

“Oh no no no it’ll be the same.”

Hmmmm

We went in a northerly direction for another 20 minutes before finally heading south.  At this point, I’m starving.  Ryan gave me a gel (thanks Ryan!).  Jordan took off on his hour tempo.  The gel holds me for awhile and I’m able to make it to the 3 hour mark before I hit the wall.  40 minutes later I’m in Taylor’s kitchen housing tortilla chips and anything that gets put in front of me.  Luckily after I polished off the bag of chips we enjoyed a massive, nutritious, and delicious lunch at Protos that included one of the best cannolis I’ve ever had (shown above).

Sunday

The big goal for April is to improve my cycling, and what better way to do that than to enter into all sorts of cycling races.  This weekend I rode in the Boulder Roubaix, 37.4 miles of racing on paved and dirt roads.  It was a ton of fun, and though very hairy at times, I made it out safely crash-free and unscathed.  I definitely lack the patience required for road racing…I go out of my skull sitting in a pack for 30 miles waiting for a break!  With about 10 miles left in the race, I made a go for it at the top of a hill and tried to time trial away on a paved bit.  One girl came with me, not enough to make it work, and we got swallowed up again by the pack.  I tried a few more times, but just couldn’t get a paceline going.  When the break that would determine the race was made I was stuck inside and my legs were kicked at that point.  I tried to get it going again, but it was too late and I finished out of the points.  Such is bike racing!  Still a fun time no matter what.  When I took off my helmet out came all sorts of small rocks and dirt.  My legs look like I got into a cat fight from the small scratches from the flying rocks and dirt throughout the race.  This is what I do for fun.  No pictures from the race, but if you want to get an idea, check out: sportifimages.com

Of course immediately after the race I had to pull the obnoxious triathlete move of going out for a run.  I don’t run off the bike much in training, so it was the perfect chance for a little brick workout and to see how my knees were holding up.  6 miles — All good!

…though I was in pain walking around for the rest of the day, but that is ok.

After another massive meal at Noodles & Co. I headed home and Jordan and I caught up on the Sydney WCS race.  ITU had really impressive coverage of the event and it got us pumped for our next ITU race in Ixtapa next month (still finalizing that one).

A super leisurely swim followed by…yet another…massive meal at the Yard House with Jordan’s mom and stepdad ended the perfect weekend.

So lucky that this is how I can spend my days =)

In mid-February I was starting to feel a little smug about the injury-free streak I had going.  In college I spent a lot of time injured with silly ailments that would come and go.  Since I’ve switched to triathlon I haven’t had a single overuse injury, it was almost a two-year streak!

Then at the end of a 10 mile run about 8 weeks ago my right knee shot with pain and the streak ended.  Womp womp.  I took a couple weeks completely off of running and then tested it out with a few of 10-20 minute test runs:  One bad, two decent.  It held up for the race in Mazatlan (and though it would be convenient, I cannot blame my pedestrian run split on my knee).   I ran a couple more times, and hopped on the treadmill for a tempo last week.  It was my best tempo ever!  Lower heart rate, slightly slower pace for the first 4 miles to be conservative, and my knee felt fine!

And while I haven’t been able to run pain-free since that tempo, it made me so thankful that I am a triathlete.  If I were still training for just running the last 7.5 weeks would have been torture.  I would’ve done something painfully stupid like pool run and I would have lost a ton of fitness.  Instead, I got it together in the pool with some solid swim weeks and picked things up on the bike.  I miss running, but by getting that one tempo in I’m not too worried about losing all of the fitness I built up over the winter….it’s there and it’s staying there thanks to swimming and cycling.

Group run at Vista.

I saw one doctor a few days before Mazatlan who didn’t help at all, and I’m planning on seeing a different one soon so I can figure out what the deal is.  …I’ve been putting it off in hopes that it will disappear suddenly, but that doesn’t seem to be happening, so I guess it’s time!

Anyway, the real point of this post was to share some of my tips for training through an injury, knowing when to stop and when to push through…just from my personal experience!

Stop:

- when you can feel it with every step/stride/stroke

- it’s a super sharp pain that radiates to another part of your body

- you notice other parts of your body getting sore/tight/achy because they are compensating for the weakness of the injured area

- it hurts a lot when you’re not training and slows down your day-to-day life (never worth messing up)

- it’s been bugging you steadily for a few weeks and isn’t getting better

Go:

- occasional pain

- it starts hurting mid-workout, but goes away after a minute

…in general I play it pretty cautious, since I want to give Sister Madonna Buder’s records a run someday

In my experience, it also helps to be realistic about what I should be doing.  If I’m hurt or feel a tweak that could turn into something gnarly, the last thing I do is drastically change my routine or start doing really intense workouts to compensate for lack of volume.  For example, with my knees I know I can’t do a kick set in the pool, so I avoid it and sub-in something else (such a pity…).  The runs I am able to do are easy and usually on soft surfaces.  The only hard run I did was a tempo (:45-1:15/mile slower than sea level 1/2 marathon race pace). It seems all too often triathletes get suckered into doing intense track workouts over short distances, which are a catalyst for breakdown and totally unnecessary unless you’re ready to bust out a sub-32 10k.  (sorry…I get fired up over track workouts…)

So there you have it, my take on training through injuries and a re-cap of the last few weeks that I have been putting off for some time…kind of like that doctor’s visit, and for similar reasons.

Welcome to Mazatlan...figuring out how to get us and our bikes into the Sprinter.

Hmmm that’s not how it was supposed to go.  Mazatlan was pretty bad…I can’t remember the last time I felt that bad in a race.  It’s one thing to have a crap day over a race that’s a few minutes long, another thing entirely to know from the start you feel like crap and still have more than 2 hours to go.  Way more than 2 hours in my case in Mazatlan.  It was like a bad dream where I just couldn’t go no matter how hard I tried.  It was frustrating and disappointing after a winter where I felt like I had really had come into my own as a triathlete.  I won’t dwell on it too much, here are some “highlights”:

- run-in beach starts are awesome.  If only all swims started with an all out 50m running sprint.  However, in order for this to be really beneficial, one must swim all out once she stops running, not just bob around.

- the mango salesman, hoisting his stadium vendor-style platform of the juicy fruit is way too tempting when cycling during the middle of the day in Mexico.  Noticing said mango salesman mid-race should be a huge signal one is not focused on race.

- water baggies are far superior to water bottles, mainly because of the novelty factor. Why don’t they have these at races in the US?

- Jordan totally crushed it and scored his first ITU points with an 11th place finish!  Step away ladies, the 23rd highest ranked American triathlete is all mine =)

Jordan heading in for a post-race dip.

- Dan and Matt had great races too, not far off from scoring points.  Ryan suffered from some severe cramping on the run leg, but still finished his first go at the ITU format, which is a great accomplishment.  Cyrus had an unfortunate bad day and suffered the same fate I did in Tuscaloosa, but I wish I could have had his positive attitude about it.

- I forgot how much sunburn sucks, and it sucks even more when you have opaque numbers written all over your limbs.  #84 fo’ life.

We know we look ridiculous! (stole this pic from Ryan)

- The Mexican TV crew didn’t care how badly I placed, they still interviewed me and I would be lying if I said that wasn’t pretty awesome.

- I finished an ITU race…one step at a time, slowly working my way up to becoming a respectable pro.

The rest of the trip was great, aside from my massive sunburn that kept me in the shade all day Sunday and all of Monday morning.  After lunch on Monday Jordan and I took out some rented surfboards and stayed in the water until it was dark.  I haven’t had that much fun playing in the waves in a long time, and it might’ve been one of my best days ever on a surfboard.  So much fun…totally forgot about the crap race.

Highly recommend Mazatlan!  We stayed at the Hotel Playa Mazatlan and it was superb!  We’re definitely going back next year =)

View from our hotel room.

Thanks to everyone for all of the encouragement after the race…definitely was appreciated! Time to get things moving and ready to go for Alcatraz in a little over a month. Figure out what went wrong, how to prevent it, and get back on the horse.

For more Mazatlan race write-ups check out:

riptidemultisports.com

Ryan Borger