Base training done, speedy stuff next

That's 98 days of training done in preparation for the 2012 triathlon season, and so far so good. I've been testing again this week, and results were a bit weird on the running track (maybe too much coffee…) but the final 200m was the fastest I've ever run in that test, my 1000m swim time is only a handful of seconds off my personal best time of last year, and I pushed up my functional threshold power figure on the bike again this morning to a new all time best value. It's all looking good, but I'm feeling the strains of all this training and will have to be extra careful in the next blocks, as the intensity starts to go through the roof.

Training sessions for the next couple of months will be a mix of mostly very hard and very easy sessions. The risk here for me is in the running side of things again. I'm hoping to push on with speed work, but I don't know if my legs can handle it yet. My main aim must be to stay healthy over pushing too hard. Easier said than done!

Take a look at how my training has balanced out as I've been able to run regularly again. Here's the breakdown of time spent in each sport in the whole of my training and racing season for 2011:

And here's the breakdown of time spent in each sport in the first 3 blocks (roughly 3 months) of training for the 2012 season:

Very different!

Time spent in the gym (strength training) will ease off later this season, and you can see how run volume has pushed back bike volume a little. Let's hope this continues!

For fun let's compare this to my off season time:

I was really, really, really (no, really) tired at the beginning of this week and it took a few days to start to clear. I had the same issue at the same stage last year. Yowch, it's awful, and highlights the need for proper, full recovery weeks. Today and yesterday I've been feeling better, and felt pretty good on the bike today.

Next block, bring it on! My first race will be at the end of the next block at the Llanelli half-marathon. That'll be a test in itself!

Week 222: spinal tracts

Ouch - we had some monster neuroanatomy learning outcomes this week. From an anatomy perspective we want students to be aware of the major motor and sensory tracts of the spinal cord, what type of information they carry, where they run (and where they cross over from one side to the other), and what would happen if the spinal cord or brainstem was damaged on just one side in terms of sensory info coming into the brain and muscle control. (It's pretty easy to work out what would happen if the spinal cord or brainstem is completely severed).

I've included a bunch of images, but excuse my scribbles, lack of legends and minimal labels. Some of this is intentional, and some of it suggests I don't have enough time to do this as completely as I would like (I tried to write this when I taught it last year and have had it on my to do list for 12 months!) The images below are of a spinal cord in transverse section with some of the spinal tracts indicated by coloured blobs, and of the brain, midbrain and spinal cord cut in coronal section with the paths of neurones indicated. Yes, really, that's the brain at the top of the diagram. The thick grey is the grey matter of the cerebral (and cerebellar) cortex.

We started with the spinal cord. By now you guys have a pretty good idea of the structure of the spinal cord, and we ran through the white (myelinated neurone axons running up and down the spinal cord) and grey (cell bodies, synapses) matter, the ventral horns (motor neurones go out) and dorsal horns (sensory neurones come in) and talked briefly about the terms "commissure" and "decussation", because the concept of neurones crossing from one side of the body to the other is important.

Tracts within the spinal cord are bundles of neurones running together, usually with a common function and going to or coming from similar places. A fascicle does the same thing. Some areas of the spinal cord are described as columns, such as the dorsal column of the spinal cord's white matter, in which tracts run bunched together.

Some major tracts to be concerned with are the corticospinal tracts (ok, there are lateral and anterior corticospinal tracts so that's two on either side), spinothalamic tracts, dorsal column tracts, and maybe spinocerebellar tracts.

Corticospinal tracts carry motor neurones (and upper motor neurones at that). Upper motor neurones start in the cortex of the brain, namely the motor cortex (or precentral cortex), run through the white matter of the brain to the brainstem, cross over to the other side of the body (decussate) in the pyramidal decussation of the medulla, and then carry on down the spinal cord in the lateral corticospinal tract. At the appropriate level they synapse with a new motor neurone (this would be a lower motor neurone) in the ventral horn of the spinal cord, which carries the action potential out along a spinal nerve and peripheral nerves to the target muscle (and the muscle contracts). The muscle that contracts is on the opposite side of the body to the side of the brain that started this, in the motor cortex.

Well, this happens for around 90% of upper motor neurones. The rest run down the same side of the body as the side of the brain that they started from, in the anterior corticospinal tract. They tend to control muscles of the body wall.

If the spinal cord is damaged on only one side, muscles on the same side as the injury (ipsilateral) will be affected because they decussated up in the medulla. (Damage to upper motor neurones tends to give muscle weakness, increased muscle tone and changes in reflexes.) Theoretically if the brainstem was damaged superior to the pyramidal decussation, effects on muscles on the opposite side to the lesion (contralateral) would be seen.

Dorsal columns and spinothalamic tracts carry sensory neurones up the spinal cord to the thalamus (which filters sensory information before relaying appropriate stuff to the somatosensory cortex).

The dorsal columns contain neurones conveying fine touch, vibration, two-point discrimination and proprioception. Peripheral neurones pass into the dorsal horn of the grey matter, pass into the dorsal column (without synapsing) and stay on the same side of the spinal cord, running superiorly to the brainstem, where they synapse with a second order neurone. This second order neurone crosses to the other side of the body and ascends to the thalamus.

Spinothalamic tracts convey neurones of pain, temperature and crude touch. In these cases peripheral neurones enter the dorsal horn of the grey matter, and may ascend on the edge of the dorsal horn for a couple of spinal segments. There they synapse with a second neurone, which crosses to the other side of the spinal cord and ascends within the spinothalamic tracts through the brainstem to the thalamus.

If we consider injury to the brainstem again, in the case of sensory information the patient would lose senses of pain, touch and proprioception on the opposite side (contralateral) of the body to the lesion (because all of the sensory neurones have crossed to the other side by this level).

If we consider injury to the spinal cord, the patient would lose senses of pain and temperature on the opposite side of the body to the lesion (those neurones crossed sides already) but would lose senses of touch and proprioception on the same side as the lesion (those neurones will not cross sides until they get to the brainstem).

Weird, huh? Have a read about Brown-Sequard syndrome.

I beat myself!

I had another crack at getting the me of 2012 to beat the me of 2011 today, and succeeded! Winner! I used a 113km course running from Gowerton out through Neath, up to Glynneath and over the Rhigos and Bwlch mountains, back to Neath and home again. It's a lovely, lovely route, along the Neath canal on quiet and interesting roads up the first valley, a climb up around the valley's head to the mountains that give fantastic views. Good hairpin climbs and descents on clean tarmac (well, except for the ice and grit), past old coal pits, showing off the South Wales valleys. Nice.

Last year, including pee stops and a garage refill stop, and a brief excursion because of some roadworks, I got round in 5:07. Its an aerobic ride so its not super quick, and there's around 1500m of climbing. From the start today I put a gap into my old self of 1km, that built to around 2km by the base of the Rhigos according to Garmin's virtual partner. Nice! I kept that gap up for the rest of the ride and beat last year's me by about 6 minutes, again including pee stops. My nutrition was a bit better managed this year (I only need a couple of tubes of Glucotabs) so I didn't need to stop for a refill.

The huge wind turbines nestled in the hills looked ominously inanimate. Good for the winter cyclist. There was very little wind today, and when the rain came in the last hour or so it wasn't too bad. I hadn't believed that it would rain at 2C. It usually either gets a little milder for rain round here, or it snows when its that cold. But it did. 2C and rain. Good job I was well prepared. Today was a good example of how you can prepare yourself for bad weather with good clothing. I use mostly Castelli layers at the moment. As I've mentioned before, I think the silvered radiation vest makes a big difference when it gets below 5C. I could really do with a clothing sponsor if anyone's interested in me trying out some stuff! Cycling is nuts for clothing costs, summer and winter.

So that's my base training pretty much done. A week of recovery and testing should give some more fitness gains, I hope, and then it'll be time to get stuck into lactate threshold and above threshold sessions, relearning race pacing and a little early season racing.

Finishing my (winter?) base training

This week I'm coming to the end of my base block of training. For nearly 3 months I've been building my training load by increasing volume and workout intensity bit by bit, with an easier week every 4 weeks to allow myself to recover. Most of that work has been aerobic, but more recently some faster paced stuff has been added. My fitness has been building nicely, I'm feeling strong, movement in the water feels good, running is going well (touch wood, cross fingers) and the biking seems to be going well with a higher functional threshold power output than last year.

I am tired. That's normal right now and a good sign, but I'm looking forward to some easy days and some more testing next week. And a lie in or two.

This week has been a bit nuts with a lot of work, blocks of my timetable taken up by various things and training getting squeezed out into early mornings as the sessions have been a bit longer. I swam a 5km session this week too which is the biggest single swim I've done, and swimming makes me sleepy. Up early and in the gym this morning I was already tired, and I had more than 4km to swim later in the morning with a bunch of 400m reps at threshold pace. It went rather well though. A good sign!

My right calf has been a little tight this week, so I skipped the box jumps to help everything recover a little for tomorrow's long run. I'm running 5 days a week so I need to be a bit careful.







Speaking of tomorrow's run, here's an example of fitting training in with working and family. I did a set of hill reps on the bike first thing in the morning yesterday and rode back past my house to pick up my bag on the way to work. I had planned to run in the afternoon and then ride home, but my last meeting was rather long so instead I ran home (with a little extra loop to make up the volume). Once home my day was done & I could eat with the family and put the kids to bed without having to go out again. But of course that left my bike in work and I needed to get into the gym early this morning. Drive? Nah. I rode another bike in this morning, gym, work, swim, work, cycle home, leaving some warm cycling kit in my office and a couple of quid. Why? Tomorrow I'll do my long run from home, over about 20km by the sea to work. I'll get rid of my wet kit, spend the cash in the vending machines and grab a snack, put on the warm cycling stuff and ride the other bike home. Job done!

Jack's got a laser tag birthday party in the afternoon, so I can give myself plenty of time to help with that. Then all I'll have left to do is a long, 5 hour(ish) ride on Sunday with a little bricked run off the bike. I hope it's not too wet and cold - the weather has turned again. Wish me luck.

Sunwise Waterloo

I went out on the bike the other day in perfect testing conditions for the Sunwise Waterloo glasses. It had been chucking it down all day, the roads were wet but the sun came out. It was super bright and low, into my face on the way out (sometimes in Wales we don't see the sun for a week or more so I'm not complaining), but then I was hidden in the shade on a wooded hill to knock out some threshold hill reps. Normally I'd struggle with a single pair of glasses but the Sunwise Waterloo's are great for this. So it was a shame I hadn't taken them as when I'd left the house it had been dark grey and chucking it down with rain. D'oh!

Fortunately I did the same workout a week later under similar conditions and took them that time!

They're a bit clever, in that they have polarised lenses, which cut out the glare from the sun on wet roads, and they're Chromafusion lenses, meaning that the darkness of the lens changes in response to the brightness of the light. Sun in your face? No problem. Shady woods? No problem. Dark clouds rolling in? Not to worry.

I've been very impressed, and I like the styling too. I've got the white pair - white seems to have become a colour of mine since starting racing again. The polarised lenses are great at cutting the glare from the sun reflecting from puddles in the road, but they've never hidden the water on the road (or ice, as I found out coming down the Black Mountain the other weekend) so they seem safe for cycling to me. I can see the puddles and avoid them. They're great for rock pooling too - you can see through the water to spot the crabs and gobies, although I tend to wear my orange Shipwrecks on the beach.

The grey lenses give a very natural tint, and as they adapt to the brightness of the day I usually forget I'm wearing them. They're my favourite for running on sunny days too as they sit well on my face. Light. I often walk back into the house still wearing them as they adapt to the light so quickly. The size and shape of the lenses mean that their coverage of my view is better than some of the other glasses I use. If I'm on the bike and glance down to my bike computer on the stem it's still within the Waterloo's lenses. The polarised lenses give a funny effect to LCD screens too, usually giving the display a little more contrast. Another interesting effect is that you can see into cars. Because the reflections from the glass are cut out you can see quite naturally into the cars around you. The advantage of this for me is in aiding my cyclist's telepathy: on the bike you have to second guess what drivers are going to do as many don't bother indicating (or looking) and being able to see the driver helps with this. And if a mate toots his horn I can look inside the car to see who the hell it is and wave or give a two fingered salute (depending on how well I know the occupants).

This is a top quality pair of glasses that I really like the look of, that work really well, are polarised and adjust to the brightness of the day. And you can pick them up on the internet for under £60.

OK, don't forget that Sunwise are sponsoring me and my racing in 2012, but I've been using and recommending their glasses for years (check back through my Flickr photos and you'll spot them).

Links

Sunwise Waterloo on the Sunwise website