hacking the race walk: shoes

Mastering a new sport is not easy. Race walking is really weird and kind of an unnatural way of walking. When I get frustrated with my lack of progress, I start to think I miss triathlon. Then I fall into the trap of looking too long at the closed door, and I get kind of depressed. It doesn't help that tri season is officially underway, most of my FB "friends" are triathletes, and every other status update is triathlon this, triathlon that. Oh please. I've thought of deactivating my account, opening up a new account with just "real" friends, or just doing some mass deletions.

I have to remind myself, this is the year of rehab. Even if I wanted to do triathlons, I have to let my body heal. So I might as well use this year to learn a new sport. Have a distraction. And have to remember that if I had the chance to learn how to swim from an expert back when I was a kid, and grew up with the proper technique, it would've made a big difference in my triathlon career. I asked Mr. Miyagi yesterday if it made a difference to learn race walking as an adult vs. a kid, and he said it didn't. (Phew.) You either get it, or you don't. Luckily I have demonstrated on multiple occasions that I am indeed trainable.

Luckily too for my psyche, I had a nice breakthrough this week, and triathlon can go on the backburner again. The key to my first year in the sport is to master the technique. It is EXTREMELY technique-heavy, and my worst fear is that I'll get DQ'ed for breaking one of the rules during a race. It's funny; there are two extremes: you can't go really fast with bad technique, but you can go TOO fast and get DQ'd if you have illegal technique. It all comes back to good technique.

My shins had been holding me back, and then they got a little better. I followed Mr. Miyagi's program and was able to progress to 10km training walks. But then my knees started bending too much on impact, and he said I had to go back to 5kms only. AUGH!!! Then I blurted out something about how maybe it's my stupid shoes that are holding me back??? Even though the Fastwitch'es are cool, with a low heel-to-toe drop, they aren't designed for race walking. Hell, most shoes aren't, unless you order a custom-made pair like Mr. Miyagi has.

So I continued my search for the perfect race walking shoe. Luckily minimalist shoes have become all the rage. You really want something that has a fairly thin sole with low stack height (the heel-to-toe drop) to keep you close to the ground, since you are heel striking and need to land with your toes sticking up. I think I've become a bit of a minimalist shoe whore. I've personally bought the following:

the Saucony Kinvara

and then the Saucony Fastwitch 5,

the Brooks PureFlow,

the Vibram FiveFingers Speed,

and this past week attained the New Balance 730's

and then the Saucony Grid Type A4.

(Full disclosure: 3 of those pairs were purchased before I even contemplated race walking. I do like the idea of a more minimal shoe for... everything.)

I am also a total running shoe nerd. My original plan in college was to become a running shoe designer with my kinesiology degree and focus on biomechanics. The NB 730's (and also the PureFlow) have a bit of a negative heel/rocker heel, like the custom race walk shoe, which actually helps with the race walk heelstrike. You're not having to "fight the shoe" and force the heel to compress. Turns out this was one of the contributing factors to why my shins were getting so sore and my knee was bending at heel strike. (It's all in the biomechanics.)

I also came to the realization that various factors that make me, me, are going to help me hack the sport of race walking. My biomechanics background. My access to an orthotics & prosthetics lab. My physical and mental training as a professional Ironman triathlete. My inherent geekiness with wanting to tinker things myself (the MacGyver complex). This post was going to be about hacking the sport, in general, but I got a bit carried away with the shoes.

Anyway, breakthrough. All last week my homework was to focus on keeping the knees straight at heelstrike. I looked much better with the new shoes (730's). I still got tired, but at least I was legal. Then we threw in some surges at the end, and Mr. Miyagi remarked that my form and technique actually look better than many elite race walkers. (*squeal!*) Now if I could only hold it for 90 minutes rather than 90 seconds...

Exciting nonetheless. The Saucony Type A4's were actually more comfortable, with a very thin sole, but the heel is not rounded. And this is the part of the story where having a MacGyver complex and access to an O&P lab (+ lab technicians) comes in. This is also the part of the story where it is 6 minutes past my "get ready for bed alarm" and so this shall be, as they say, to be continued...

New Puppy Exhaustion

Wednesday morning. Day off. That's right, I still only ever work 2 days in a row. Originally so I could still go about training like a crazy pro triathlete whilst holding down a (technically) full-time job. That didn't last long, but my work schedule has stayed the same.

I am still resisting going back to a completely normal life. I am still holding onto the belief that I am an awesome athlete capable of extraordinary things. Wednesdays have become private lesson day with Mr. Miyagi, expert race walking instructor. I've been telling people I will get to the 2016 Olympics. The more I say it out loud, the less stupid and ridiculous it sounds. I got my first training schedule 2 weeks ago. Yes, it's purposely blurry so that all the training secrets are not revealed.

Mr. Miyagi had to cancel at the last minute today, but this last week has been rough anyway. I've got a good case of New Puppy Exhaustion (NPE). At first it was just real physical exhaustion, as she couldn't sleep through the night without squealing to go the bathroom at 3am, or scratch at her very jingly-jangly collar full of noisy tags at 1am. Now it's more the mental exhaustion of never leaving her unsupervised. We considered getting two dogs so they can keep each other entertained...luckily she has Winston, her older brother/imaginary puppy friend. She loves wrestling with him and sometimes I imagine they're like Calvin & Hobbes...

She is still delightful and adorable, and full of love. And trouble, full of trouble. And visibly growing bigger every day. I'm telling people she is a Boston Terrier/Lab mix but she could be anything since we rescued her from a shelter and a life of crime.

At least today I get to catch up on all the normal things that NPE makes me too tired for. I can write a couple blogs and finish cleaning after our Super Bowl party, get groceries, do laundry, have another attempt at a Paleo pizza. Socks did really well last weekend when the Sherpa's college buddies came over with their small children and Oreo cupcakes, decked out in her 49ers jersey...oh, and of course we watched the Puppy Bowl before all the guests came over!

I think we've been doing pretty good as far as parenting and training...she isn't allowed to eat "people" food and doesn't even beg for it at the table. We can basically have her hang out on the couch with us while eating a snack and she isn't interested. Hooray!

the new rules of race scheduling

My comments form is acting out, so I apologize if you've left a comment and I haven't been able to say thanks or anything. Thanks! The best part of being at home is all the delicious Asian restaurants everywhere. I had bibimbap at the K. Grill and Tofu House in San Bruno the other day:

Delicious! I may hold a grudge against Korean drivers (or just one in particular), but not against their bibimbap. Or bulgogi.


Anyway, now that I've established the new rules of training, I've given some thought to my race schedule for 2012 and most of it is TBD. It kind of depends on how my race walk progress goes and how my knee is feeling for running.

1. Race walking: There's a whole Race Walk Grand Prix that USA Track & Field puts on with national championships in distances from 1 mile to 50km, even a one-hour championships. I would LOVE to get up to the 20km distance to see how I stack up with the Olympic Trials qualifying times, but not sure when I'll be ready. Right now my training is capped at one hour or 5 miles per session. A 20km would take 2+ hours. But one thing's for sure, I want to start racing in this. There's a reason it's called RACE walking. ;)

2. Running races: 5km or less. There were always these fun crazy 5km's I've wanted to do, but haven't. Because I was too much of a "hard-core" pro triathlete to do something fun that might get me injured. (And sure enough I get injured from an Ironman race, go figure.)

Here are some I'm thinking of for 2012:
a) The Barathon. 5 beers in 5km. Hosted by some of our friends who are ultramarathoners/frisbee plaers, it's a small grassroots "race" but we get real T-shirts. Did this last year in 24-ish minutes and took 2nd OA (the first two of us were both women!).
b) Zombie Run--"Run For Your Lives" right before Halloween near Baltimore. I want to go as a Zombie. Sherpa wants to go as a human. We really like The Walking Dead, what can I say? :)
c) some sort of Doggie Dash. We'll see if Socks can be trained up to run a 5km, or maybe there will be a one-mile version.
d) one of the city scavenger hunts. There are a few in Philadelphia: the Scavenger Dash (5/6/2012), Great Urban Race (9/15/2012), CitySolve Urban Race (7/7/2012). You get to do it in teams and it's like the Amazing Race on a much smaller scale. With costumes.
e) maaaaybe the Mud Run. (end of September) There are all kinds of obstacles and the hard-core athlete in me is still wary of getting hurt, but it sounds fun and I've always wanted to do one since college. (There was the Mud Run at Camp Pendleton I never made it to.)

3. Travel restrictions: with having a puppy and trying to minimize the credit card debt, all of the races are local, or at least within driving distance. (I'll make an exception for the Olympic Trials in Eugene, OR, but for now that's a bit of a stretch.) It will be cool to get Socks trained as a service dog so she can come on airplanes with us in the future. Cuz she's already too big to be chihuahua travel size! Despite being much smaller than...a horse.

4. Sherpa-ing or spectating: I'll be sherpa-ing at Ironman Louisville for the Food Coach, and being my own Sherpa's #1 cheerleader at some of his tournaments. Well, me and Socks will be tied for #1, I think. But it will definitely be nice to support my besties and not always be so me, me, me in terms of racing.

5. Triathloning: I was going to JUST SAY NO, but Mac informed me of a unique local "triathlon" here that involves no swimming or running. And includes RACE WALKING. Which is pretty wild. It's the Marshalton Triathlon and it's a tiny little local race that's been going on for almost 40 years now. It even advertises itself as "the country's oldest triathlon". Not the traditional swim/bike/run at all, but something like a 2.3-mile bike, 3.0-mile canoe, 2.5-mile walk, and 2.3-mile bike. HMMMM. How could I resist that? I can bike, race walk, and rowed for Georgia Tech. It's not til October. Let's keep our eyes posted on this one!

That is all. I'm excited.

race walk PROGRESS

Progress is slow but steady. I got my first pair of shoes specifically for race walking at Delaware Running Company last week, the Saucony Fastwitch 5, and these shoes have ATTITUDE:

Love 'em! Turns out my standard running shoe size (10's and 10.5's) that I've worn for over 15 years are a touch too loose and contributed to my heel blisters. Now I'm in a 9.5 and my feet are so much happier!

I'm figuring out little ways to kickstart the fast walker in me, because as a trained runner, walking is by default slow and steady. I've incorporated a couple treadmill runs twice a week in the morning at Fusion Fitness, and it's actually kind of fun. Almost like a game to me: see how high I can get the speed up without breaking form and going into a trot/jog. I remember learning about that transition point when I was in college, exercise physiology class--there is a preferred walk-to-run transition speed, the point where it is actually easier and more efficient to run at a certain speed than to walk that fast. Right now I'm capping myself at 5mph and seeing how long I can hold that speed for.

What else is fun is that when I go at 7am, it is quiet enough that I get to watch Curious George on PBS. Yep, while the cardio machines next to me are tuned into the boring news or overpaid pro sports, I always switch the channel to cartoons. :)

On Saturdays I've been doing a 1km marked loop at a nearby park. Then I see how far I can walk in an hour, and take splits for each 1km. Without fail, I negative split every single lap. I guess I just need to get warmed up and get a rhythm going! I've been tracking my best 5km, which is always the last 5 laps since I'm a stud negative-splitter. 2 weeks ago was 43:50, last weekend was 39:04 and yesterday was 36:09! All unofficial times without judges of course, but I am pretty focused on staying "legal."

Before I can start real training, I need to be able to race walk 5 days a week for an hour without my shins screaming at me. They are much better than a week ago. I got in all 5 days, two of them were 30-min treadmill sessions and the others were all one hour. PROGRESS.

I don't plan to enter any races until I get myself under 10-min miles. (Still nowhere near elite level, but hopefully fast enough to not embarrass myself.) Which means a 30-min 5km, and if I can do that, it's just a matter of tapping into my endurance for a sub-hour 10km and sub-2hr 20km. Qualifying for the Olympic Trials means a 1:48 20km. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. A 30-min 5km is the first goal!

In other news, I also saw my chiropractor Dr. Jannelli, my "Body Mechanic", for the first time since I retired from triathlon. He always checks that my pelvis is balanced and was SHOCKED when I came in on Wednesday. In a good way too! I've seen him for over a year now and when I lie face-down, my pelvis has always been uneven. My racewalk coach "Mr. Miyagi" has me doing all these hip mobility drills every day and apparently they are magic. Dr. J concluded that my body has been more balanced than he's ever seen it, and by far (he had to check at least 3 times because he couldn't believe it). Then he said the same thing I had been thinking this whole time--being a race walker is so much better for me than being a triathlete.

Maybe I was meant for this.

shins on fire

I am still very much in the newbie stage as a racewalker, learning the technique and limited by the strength of my shins, actually. I was pretty excited to time my first 5km under 44 minutes, woohoo, which is slow as molasses, but it was LEGAL. For any of you who are like "pssh, I can walk 15-minute miles without even training," you probably don't know rule #2 of racewalking: we don't talk about racewalking.

Just kidding. There are only two rules in the sport.

When I first contemplate trying the sport, my sister insisted I had to watch a Malcolm in the Middle episode where the dad gets into racewalking. LMFAO...they have AERO HELMETS!!!! Youtube did not dissapoint:

Most people are familiar with the first rule, that you can't have more than one foot of the ground at a time. That would constitute a "flight phase" i.e. you would be running. And thus disqualified.

Rule #2: your front leg has to land on the ground straight, i.e. you can't bend the knee until it passes under you.

Weird, right? that's why those elite walkers look like they have no knee joints. Anyway, you land on your heels with your toes pointing up to enhance the kinetic chain. toes up =>> straight knee.

So apparently I have weak shins, and walking easy for an hour (LEGALLY) would be like doing bicep curls for a whole hour with wimpy arms. The training priorities are technique first, which at this point involves primarily anterior tibialis muscle building, before I can really start training.

In conclusion, it looks like I will not be Quadzilla, or Abzilla, but at this point...SHINZILLA.

whispering the loudest and talking at the top of your lungs

Yesterday my favorite Hungarian/Canadian/Jewish fan (you know who you are) sent me a message saying, "we runners used to say that race walking is like seeing who can whisper the loudest."

Well, I told him that we Chinese people are well known for talking at the top of our lungs, but it's not considered screaming. (Just go into any Chinatown tea house. You just step in and there's this ROAR all around you.)

No coincidence, the best racewalkers in the world hail from Russia and CHINA. That's what Wikipedia tells me anyway, and everyone knows that Wikipedia is like the Magic Eight Ball and has all the answers to life's biggest questions. (42!)

And check it out, the fastest two Chinese are Wang's. That's a close cousin to Wong, of course.

Clearly this is my destiny.

Even trippier, 3+ years ago, after Brett watched me run for the first time at teamTBB training camp in fall of 2008, he promptly instructed me to go on YouTube and watch racewalkers. I was supposed to run like a racewalker who was cheating. (They aren't allowed to have both feet off the ground at the same time.) The emphasis was on the heel strike, and high cadence.

Another year later, we were at the training camp in Jeju, South Korea, where it seems many significant events in my life have taken place (spooky?), and we trained on the same track as the national team's racewalking unit. I actually blogged about it in my little spoof "Making the Grade at Sutto's Triathlon Academy." They were really quite amazing to watch, one guy was walking circles around some of our guys!

This was the first time I really did my racewalking "homework," and learned through my Google research that Chinese girls can indeed have six-pack abs. The Abzilla pictured above is the 3rd fastest girl on the all-time list, Liu Hongyu, who took 4th in the last Olympics and got 2nd last year at the world championships. (If you watched the video I posted up on Monday, you will recognize her as 2nd across the line. But yeah, I know, we all look the same, eh?)

Back then (2+ years ago), I believed that if I ate "right" (inadvertently starving myself) and kept up the ridiculous hours of Ironman training, those six-pack abs would be mine. Wrong! I will have to racewalk like a maniac to get them!

Anyway, other than getting distracted once again by the awesomeness that is racewalkers' abdominal muscles, I think I meant to say that Chinese people are really good at two things:

1. racewalking.
2. talking super loud (but below the scream threshold), which is like being able to whisper the loudest, which is like racewalking.

Therefore: because I'm full-blooded Chinese, then: I should be really good at this new sport too. Right.

In similar news, I had Lesson #2 today and it went well! I am holding my form even when increasing speed. This first month is all about getting the technique down. Details next time!

introducing: the Wongstar's new sport!

So I mentioned I was on the hunt for a new sport.

I've always been the kind of person who focuses on what I can do instead of dwelling on the can't. Since I started to take the knee injury more seriously (instead of ignoring it and being A Big Giant Denial-Head), I had to face the fact that if I wanted it to heal up, I couldn't bike or run on it. For an indefinite amount of time...crappy little ligaments have poor blood supply and just take time to heal. Who knows how long.

I realized that dwelling on not being able to bike or run was making me into a very bitter, angry, depressed and dejected sourpuss. Not very like me at all. Sure I could swim...with a pull buoy, or just light kicking...but the last two winters I've focused on swimming hard-core, and doing something that is my least favorite sport all winter makes me grumpy and bitter too.

Still, I needed to do something. My original plan was to get into ultramarathons, when I first thought I could still run and not bike. But running over 70 minutes made my knee swell up a little. So back to the drawing board. I figured I needed to find a sport that I could enjoy and also be competitive in. It also had to be low-impact and not bother my knee. And tap into my ginormous endurance base and burn lots of calories and provide a nice endorphin high. And probably nothing to do with throwing and catching things, of which I'm not so coordinated. I'm not much of a team player either. hahaha! "Doesn't play well with others."

So no team sports or ball sports and low impact and endurance-ish.

Enter one of the most obscure Olympic events known to Americans:

RACEWALKING.

Yeah, did you know it's an official track & field event? The 20km is the standard distance at the Olympics. Here is a clip from last year's track & field world championships in Daegu:

The world record is 1:25:08. You know, when I ran the Penn Relays 20km and won it earlier this year, I did it in 1:28:20. Holy crap, they can walk faster than I can run!

AND LOOK AT ALL THOSE SIX-PACK ABS!!!

So yes, it does look really funny but abs, people, ABS. I had my first technique lesson last Wednesday. The weirdest part is not how it looks but learning how to "walk" all over again. I'd liken it to being a freestyle swimmer and learning how to do butterfly or breaststroke after years and years of doing freestyle only. Something like that.

And it is an Olympic event! And they have killer abs! Sign me up!