salvaged smithereens (training notes 10/26/07)

training this week was almost shot to smithereens. and that may be putting it kindly.

it wasn't laziness.

as the previous posts this week indicate, the wildfires pretty knocked all the build workouts i had planned this week. not because i'm living in a fire area--South Pasadena and Los Angeles are not the same places as Malibu, Lake Arrowhead, Orange County, San Diego, etc. but more because the smoke and ash produced from the wildfires made the almost unbreathable.

and if it wasn't unbreathable, it was still dangerous. using the U.S. government air quality website for L.A. (reference: AirNow.gov: Los Angeles Metro & Inland Orange County) the air quality forecast most of this week has been rated "unhealthy."

i did manage to get in a long swim Monday morning (before the fires erupted). and i got so frustrated Friday that i went ahead and put in a 140 minute ride on a stationary bike in the school gym. probably not a good idea, since the air didn't feel any better inside than it did outside. but at least i assuaged my paranoia...hopefully not at the expense of too much danger to my health.

you can see my workouts this week on my Google calendar (click on the "Google Training" button to the right, or reference: http://www.google.com/calendar/render).

the bigger concern is the coming weeks. the news says the smoke and ash is so fine that it is likely to linger for weeks. rains may help to filter it down, and there was a little rain this morning, but it's going to take some time. which means that this puts my build workouts for the foreseeable future into jeopardy...serious jeopardy.

we'll see. i'm going to cross my fingers and keep an eye on the air quality forecast. and hope.

california wildfires - (still) poisonous air

so things are supposedly better...at least, the fires are better up in the mountains. but the smoke is sort of worse down in the Los Angeles basin.

if you look at the real-time Google map of the burn areas on my previous post (reference: wildfire california - (more) poisonous air), you'll see that many of the wildfires are under control.

thing is, i woke up this morning, and found i couldn't breath. i was wheezing just to get from the bed to the bathroom. my nose has been bleeding constantly. i've still got a headache, and i've been feeling lightheaded to boot. and all this was before i even got out of my apartment to go to class.

the air smells of ash. it's that distinct pungent odor of soot mixed with burned-out dirt and dead wood. and it's everywhere.

it's also thick: normally you can see all the way to the mountains from campus, which is about 12-15 miles, but today you couldn't even see the skyline, which is only 1 mile away.

i don't even want to know what it's doing to my lungs. i decided to go to the gym and get some training in, figuring a workout indoors would be safe...wrong. the tightness in my chest stayed with me through the entire workout, and i noticed that my breath had the distinct smell of smoker's mouth (you know, cigarettes)--and i don't smoke.

a friend of mine decided to do the big F-U to the fires, and went out for bike ride yesterday afternoon. he had to stop 12 miles in because of chest pains. by evening he was coughing up black stuff. today, he's still hacking and suffering just to make it through class. just peachy.

i was going to stay on campus and try to do some work, but i figured enough was enough and decided to go home. not that it's an improvement, but at least i can get more comfortable.

and at least i've got a place to stay. i pity all the people who don't even have that.

not that it helps, but here's a series of satellite images over the past few days.

this is today:compare it to yesterday:and then check out the day before yesterday:ummmmmm...so, yeah. things are improving. maybe? somewhere? somehow?

well, somebody tell when they do. cuz right now, things are still pretty miserable.

wildfire california - (more) poisonous air

okay, this is to follow up my post from yesterday (reference: poisonous air).

it's amazing how fast things can change...for the worse.

so this was the satellite image of the fires yesterday:compare this to the satellite image today:ummmmmmmm...yeah. fires seem a little worse, yeah? smoke and ash ditto, yeah? and they're saying that it actually could have been worse, since they were originally expecting winds as strong as those from the past 2 days (as much as 75-100 mph) but instead got winds of only 15-30 mph.

as a matter of timeliness, i'll embed a live Google map of the fires created by the LA Times:

View Larger Map

and the stuff i wrote yesterday about the health dangers from the smoke and ash is now confirmed by news reports. CNN posted an article about the dangers of inhalation from wildfires, even for people in areas not immediately affected by them. the link to the article is: http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/10/23/env.health/index.html. but i'll excerpt the relevant part here:

...the real concerns are the particles and gases in the smoke. When a fire burns it generates carbon dioxide, water vapor, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and other chemicals.

And the wind can carry those particles to areas far from the fires. See the NASA photograph of smoke from the fires

When you breathe the smoke, the tiny particles burrow deep into the lungs, causing serious irritation, mucous build-up and breathing problems.

Most masks don't really help, because the particles are so tiny they pass through the filters, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC said that people with heart and lung disease, children and older adults are most vulnerable, but even healthy adults can suffer symptoms when smoke levels are high enough.

It said smoke can cause:

• Coughing
• A scratchy throat
• Irritated sinuses
• Shortness of breath
• Chest pain
• Headaches
• Stinging eyes
• A runny nose
• Asthma exacerbations

The government's Air Quality Index shows "unhealthy" pollution levels in much of Southern California. That means that people may experience these symptoms.

CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said those problems can last for weeks after the fire.

He said the best thing to do if you smell smoke is to stay inside.

yeah, i live in South Pasadena and my school is USC (down by downtown), meaning that i'm not anywhere near the burn areas. but we are most definitely directly in the smoke plume from the fires to the north and east (depends on the direction of the winds, but we're getting it either way). and i--and all my friends--are pretty much getting all the symptoms given in the article.

training?

that's kind of an afterthought at this stage. i can get stuff in at the gym, but beyond that there's pretty much nothing that's going to go on. not at least while things are the way they are. that, and it seems kind of ludicrous to go for a bike or run (or even swim) with all the toxic material in the air and with people streaming down to the city to get away from the fire.

if there's more to post, i'll post.

poisonous air

oh how lovely...

air quality is lovely across the nation. except the little corner in the lower left--the one marked in bright red.

the color legend marks "good quality" as being green, "moderate" as yellow, "unhealthy for sensitive people" as orange, and "unhealthy" as red. this, of course, is the current state of Southern California.

contrary to popular stereotype, the cause is not smog (even though current temps of around 90 certainly exacerbate this). rather, it's a sudden onslaught of wildfires. and i mean sudden--as in the space of a few hours.

check out the following satellite images for October 22, and note the time stamps on each:
note: no major indications of fires, apart from the areas in Malibu (the white tracers coming off the shore). incidentally, the Malibu fires came Saturday night and erupted by Sunday morning, shutting down the entire community.

note: that's right, 2:50 pm. only a little over 3 hours later. it was an eruption across major stretches of the outlying suburbs in the foothills and mountains.

this isn't the half of it. there's apparently also fires raging east of LA and south towards Orange County and San Diego. meaning there's flames all around the city. i tried to find satellite image showing these, but the fires have only occurred in the past few hours, and so i'm guessing satellite imagery hasn't quite caught up yet. the point is that--while not evident from the above photos--this entire region is now afloat in a ring of wildfires being carried towards the city regardless of which direction the wind is blowing.

you can sort of see it in this satellite image:
note: the white tracers are plumes of smoke and ash. the red dots are computer-generated indicators of fires.

it's not helpful that the city of Los Angeles and its related metropolitan communities all sit in a basin facing the ocean and surrounded by foothills and mountains. because all the fires are in the foothills and mountains, this means that the heavier particulate matter rising from the flames are being blown down into the basin, where they settle out of the higher winds and sink into the relatively still air within the local neighborhoods.

isn't that nice?

those of you familiar with this kind of thing know what i'm getting at: smoke and ash.

lots of it.

bad enough that you can feel it in your lungs. i kind of knew something was up, since my nostrils started burning around lunchtime and i've become a non-stop snot factory since then. which is odd, seeing i have no allergies during this time of year. i also now have a major headache, a sore throat, and tightness in the chest. it doesn't help that the level of pollution in the soil around here makes all the smoke and ash toxic.

i'm not the only one. everyone else i've spoken to around campus is saying the same (or similar) things, with the same (or similar) symptoms. and they all noticed around the same time i did.

as athletes, you also know the consequence of this: no training.

none.

oh you could go out and get a workout in. but based on the particulate matter readings, you'd be inhaling enough material that you'd end up doing long-term damage to your lungs. this would effectively negate any benefits from training in terms of increased conditioning, and very likely actually incur costs from decreased conditioning. working out in these conditions--hell, just breathing in these conditions--is tantamount to sucking in poisonous air. who knows what it's doing to your insides.

i'm not particularly happy. this was supposed to be a build week. an important one. now it may not be anything.

and i feel particularly bad for all communities getting torched (literally) by this. i've got friends from communities in the affected areas, and they're freaking out. tough situation. they've got my sympathies.

i guess on a morbidly (and perhaps inappropriately poor taste) positive note, i suppose this means more time for me to work on my dissertation and hunt down a post-doc. yippee!

hey, you have to be as constructive as you can, right?

i'm really worried this may go on for awhile. Southern California is in the worst drought it's had in the past 50 years, and everybody is talking about how dry everything is--trees, shrubs, grass, weeds, dirt. dry dry dry. parched to a crispy crumbly crackly goodness. just perfect to serve as...tinder.

yeah, this is going to go on for awhile. and that's not good. not for me, and not for anybody.

dissertation acclimation expectation paranoia (training notes 10/20/07)

one of the hardest parts about training is holding back. it sounds odd, but a driving rule in training (or so i've been told) is to stick to a plan of building up to race day, and to rein yourself in even thought the temptation is sometimes really strong to ramp up intensity and volume. i've had several coaches stress to me that training is like building a house: the higher you want the house to go (i.e., the greater the performance), the bigger the foundation that has to be laid (i.e., the more expansive the base and build periods).

for me, it's always a struggle with paranoia and expectations. paranoia that i'm not training hard enough, and expectations that i should be meeting or exceeding the physical capabilities i had before. i'm having to constantly remind myself of several things:

• this is the beginning of the training cycle for Ironman, and that i'm building the groundwork for higher intensity and volume later. which means the workouts shouldn't be brutal. they should just be pushing the envelope a little bit to alert the body's systems that they need to adapt to a higher workload.
• supposedly, because this stage of training is initiating the body's adaptive mechanisms, it's really an acclimation phase to let you get used to a higher stage in training.
• acclimation, by definition, involves recovery. without recovery, there's no adaptation...there's just destruction. which is not what you want.
  

and i think that's what makes it so difficult. because i'm dealing with 2 conflicting things:

• in the back of my mind i'm very much aware of the big numbers of Ironman: 2.4 + 112 + 26.2 = 140.6 freakin' miles. and i subconsciously (or consciously) compare that to what i'm doing now...which this week, was at best an 8 mile run and 2 hr. stationary bike ride and a modest 2600 yds swim. pitiful.
• training is telling me to focus on recovery, not just the workout numbers. meaning that even as my mind is racing with anxiety to get those numbers up, the training plan is asking me to hold back and allow rest time. which means inactivity. ugh!

it doesn't help that my stress levels are somewhat elevated right now because of this freakin' doctoral dissertation. not all of you are PhD graduate students, but the way it works is that as a doctoral student you're supposed to spend a number of years creating a mammoth work of research that presumably contributes to human knowledge, and you finish by presenting the research to a committee of professors who then get to pepper you with questions to test your knowledge in something called a "defense"...and for my field (international politics), the dissertations are usually 200-400 pages long and the defenses are generally 2-3 hours.

i'm not running up the walls (yet), but i can still tell this dissertation is weighing on me mentally, and it's already taking time away from training. i'm working on a deadline to finish by the end of October and defend by the end of December. both of which are real soon. meaning hours and hours of time in front of this computer.

i'd call it part of recovery time, but i really wonder.

you see? dissertation. acclimation. expectation. paranoia!

who i am

well, this blog has been around a while in one form or another, and i've been pretty much anonymous during that time.

but seeing that i've been doing this seriously within the past year, and seeing the Google Analytics data on this blog, i figure it's time to finally get around to introducing myself. i'm trying to get a writing career going, and the material on this blog seems to be the area that i want to go in--you know, stuff on life using triathlon and sports as a vehicle to deal with deeper issues (or not). that, and the data on this blog shows that i appear to be building up a regular following, with people from around the world. i've got pageviews--and i'm having pages quoted--from places like Brazil, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, Israel, South Africa, Germany, and (of course) my original place of Sweden (heja, svenska allihopa!). hey everybody, and thanks for reading...hope you keep coming back!

so to help everyone out, and to answer your potential questions as to "just who is this guy?!?!" i'd like to offer up this brief run-down.

my Trifuel bio probably gives the most succinct and best introduction:

Jonathan is finishing a dual-degree PhD/JD program at the University of Southern California. He does Ironmans for several self-delusional reasons: health, fitness, fun, boredom, vicarious suffering, existentialist crises, spiritual angst, conversations with god(s), and the meaning of life, the universe, and things in general. He likes to write about all these things in relation to Ironman, and hopes that people like reading what he writes about all these things in relation to Ironman.

of course, i should add by also stating a few more salient points:

• as an Ironman, i suck. really suck. my 1st Ironman i had heat issues and ended up on the side of the road getting watered down by volunteers (yeah, i was one of those guys), and struggled to just get across the finish. the 2nd Ironman i got to learn the meaning of cycling, when i found out what it really feels like to have to pedal courtesy of sustained 30-40 mph winds (strong enough to blow the port-a-potties over...how lovely). i'm hoping my 3rd Ironman is a break-through performance, but who knows. nobody ever knows.
• i'm in the last year of graduate school. so i won't be a grad student much longer. i'm actually defending my dissertation soon, very soon. which means i'm looking for a job...which means that if any of you have a heads up on a job that's interested in somebody with a PhD/JD focusing on international politics who likes to write and (oh by the way) also does Ironmans, have them contact me. OR, if you know of any post-doctoral programs or schools looking to hire faculty (note: i really prefer places that have a climate accommodating Ironman training and--oh yeah--surfing), then have them contact me.
• i'm (obviously) living in Southern California. South Pasadena area to be exact. it's a small suburb, not as famous as its bigger (and more famous) neighbor Pasadena, but it's quaint and has a certain charm. as a grad student, i'm scraping money to make rent payments here, and i'm sure i'll never to be able to afford to buy a house in this town (average house price here: approx. $850,000), but it works until i graduate and get a job.
• i'm your average single guy. i like to think i'm funny, down-to-earth, and accessible. i've been told that girls think of me as like their "best friend's edgy older brother." no idea what that means...i suspect they're saying they see me as that slightly older, slightly mature, slightly world-wise, smart-ass a-t-t-i-t-u-d-e (but still approachable) college guy they always kinda sorta maybe perhaps one-day-but-oh-uh-i-dunno were really curious about but just couldn't dare to make a step to hang out with. yeah, that guy.
• whatever.
• i live in Southern California, but i'm originally from Sweden. go figure. but my family moved over here when i was so young that i've forgotten most of my Swedish and really consider myself as SoCal. although...my parents really want to see me go back to Europe for at least a little while re-connect with my Swedish roots and (just maybe) get married with a decent Swedish girl.
• whatever
• i may originally be Swedish, but NO, i am NOT blonde or blue-eyed. i'm EURASIAN. as in a skinny half-breed eurasian. i'm so far from the stereotype of Swedes that people don't even believe i'm Swedish--including most swedes. i think people have a hard time getting their head around the fact that Sweden is increasinly a multi-cultural country, and there are now Swedes of all different kinds of ethnicities. but as i once read in a New Zealand travel brochure: "race relations always end up being resolved in the bedroom." i guess that applied in my parents' case. go figure.
• whatever
  
• triathlon isn't my only interest. obviously, i surf. not regularly, but enough to enjoy it and to know i need to do it more. i also snowboard. ditto. i've been doing kung fu lately, and have gotten serious enough about it that i actually have a blog about it (reference: jonathanonapath.blogspot.com). i also like things like art, poetry, opera, ballet, and getting to know other cultures...which means eating all kinds of food, checking out all kinds of events, meeting different kinds of people, and traveling when i get the chance. call it a way of retaining my sanity in a world of utter insanity
• thing i live by: to learn about yourself, you have to learn about the world; to understand the world, you have to understand yourself.
• another thing i live by: all the world is suffering; the question is: what do you do about it?
• yet another thing i live by: we all live, we all die. so what do you with the time you have left?
• yet one more thing i live by: damn, would everybody just chill out?
  
• and oh yeah: whatever

well, that's about it. hope that satisfies your curiousity...and didn't repel you away.

thanks for reading, and all your comments! please feel welcome to check this blog out anytime.

blog action day 2007: race day trash

i'm writing this on behalf of Blog Action Day (reference: http://www.blogactionday.org/). it's being promoted by Blogger, and it seems like the kind of thing that i'm interested in supporting, so i figured i'd go ahead and participate. Blog Action Day is an annual event, and is hopes to bring global attention to a specific issue (a new one chosen each year) by having all participating bloggers write a post on their blog on the selected topic on the same day. for this year, it's the environment.

for my part, i was originally planning to write about "zero carbon footprint" or "carbon neutral" triathlon races (for carbon neutral in general, reference: Wikipedia: Carbon Neutral). this involves reducing the amount of carbon-related wastes produced by triathlon races (including greenhouse-increasing emissions). but this is a topic that seems to be generating momentum on its own, with a lot of impetus coming from Clif Bar (reference: Clif Bar: Our Story, Environment) through its affiliation with a growing number of races.

as a result, i figured to focus on something that was getting less attention, but which was 1) equally as reprehensible and in need of mitigation, and 2) within the immediate sphere of action for most of us as athletes. i'm pretty you sure you can deduce this from the picture at the top: trash. specifically, trash at races.

i used to think that the trash that piles up at races was just a part of racing, that the act of dropping used cups, empty gels, consumed fruit, and random equipment was an endemic part of competition on race courses extending over public waterways and streets. it seemed reasonable--the entire point of racing was to compete, meaning go as fast as you can, which in turn meant that there wasn't time to look for trash cans and then make the concentrated effort to stop and drop garbage off in them.

but lately, i've started to think otherwise.

it wasn't an overnight decision. it was more just a gradual sense of discomfort over seeing the raw quantity of trash that piled up at each race i entered, particularly as i started to stay the day after each race and got to see the amount of work involved in cleaning everything up. the amount of garbage was profound. and it wasn't just in readily accessible urban streets, but also on rural roads and country trails, in locations that were ostensibly parks or even protected natural lands.

a number of things began to bother me:

• the level of waste is completely out of proportion to the level of competition. by this, i mean that it seems the only people who could be excused for throwing trash on the race course would be professionals and some elites whose livelihoods depended on their velocity and finishing time. for the rest of us, there just isn't that much at stake to justify defacing public property (i.e., if the only thing at stake is your own ego, then how does that weigh against the money that has to be spent to clean things up?)
• if you're going to walk (or run) through an aid station to get energy drink, water, gels, fruit, etc., then it shouldn't be too hard to walk (or run) to the trash can at the aid station to drop off the garbage. seriously, it's only a few meters. it's not that hard. and even if you're on a bike, it's not that hard to slow down to drop your refuse at the trash bin. it's only a few seconds, and the vast majority of competitors are not going to have their livelihoods threatened by losing a few seconds to maintain a clean environment (i.e., again, if the only thing at stake is your own ego, then it's immaterial compared to the few seconds it will take to properly dispose the refuse you are holding in your hands)
  
• even if race fees go towards cleaning up garbage, and hence offset the public taxes expended on the problem, this still creates the subsequent issue of race organizers increasing race fees...just like any business, they're going to pass on the costs (race day trash collection) onto their consumers (competitors). in which case, as a consumer, i'd prefer to save some money and try to see if costs (trash) could be decreased
• it doesn't seem limited to race day. i'm seriously starting to suspect that competitors who are lackadaisical about throwing trash on the course during a race are also people who are just as lackadaisical about throwing trash on the streets on normal days...their carelessness seems habit-forming
• it seems entirely contrary to the notion of athletics to be so careless about garbage. athletics is supposedly about values like commitment and discipline. but there's not much commitment and discipline in simply dumping garbage on the race course
• this was (and is) the kind of behavior that on normal days would be considered littering, which in most places is a crime involving a fine (and in some extreme cases, more)
• it's ugly. it's nasty. it's disgusting
  

it's because of this that in recent years i've started to make a more concerted effort in how i deal with my trash during races. i've begun to follow 2 strategies:

• pack-in-pack-out: this is a hiker's rule held by backpackers camping in the wilderness. it's a general principle meant to preserve the natural world in a pristine state so that its ecology can continue without any more human disruption than necessary. it's also meant to keep things in a way that other people can enjoy it after you've left.
• aim for the trash can: i figure i can hold on to my trash until i spot a trash can, and which point i can save other people's energy by being responsible and disposing my own garbage into the trash bin. it's not that hard, and i figure it's the least i can do for all the work that race organizers, volunteers, and local communities do in hosting me.
  

i know i'm just 1 person doing this, but it always makes me feel better to know that i'm doing something constructive. and i always get seem to get confirmation from a race volunteer, a race organizer, a city official, or even public service worker who invariably thank me for my efforts.

i don't proselytize to anybody else. i figure it'd just be 1) annoying, and 2) make me out to be some kind of arrogant holier-than-thou lunatic. besides, i'm usually too tired to even talk. still, i hope that it sets an example, and that maybe somebody else in the race might see me and be inspired to follow my lead.

somebody like you.