I cannot recall when I started to get ads for the Frontier X heart rate monitor. For some reason they looked like just another far-fetched gadget promising to make you faster while in the end just separating age groupers from their cash. Plenty of that in my news feed every day. It was after I finally got a diagnosis for my arrhythmia that I began to look past the hunky, buff, bare chested dude in the photo and dig into more detail.

Sunday’s Honolulu Triathlon went well, and it had its challenges. Before getting into the details, let’s take a step back and get some perspective. 

Do you ever get the feeling you have turned a corner in your training? For a while things seem so-so, then all of a sudden things get serious? For me that turning point was last Sunday’s Honolulu Metric Century Ride. 

Apologies to The Ventures!

In my previous post I shared some thoughts on walking rather than running the run portion of a long course triathlon. To summarize, coaches always tell their athletes to hold back on the bike, not to pace it like an all-out time trial, because as soon as they get off of the bike they have to run a marathon. My current thinking is that I run so slow I might as well walk. This should allow me to pace the bike faster, and may result in a faster overall time, due to the lower metabolic cost of walking.

There is something that has been bothering me for years. I run slow. Until now I have clung to the belief that if I train well I will go faster. Hardly a day passes without me seeing a post from Runners World or Triathlete Magazine promising as much. Run these intervals. Run in the hills. Work on your core. If it is not about my body, it is about my shoes. Better shoes make you faster. So they say.

I must admit that over the last five years, in spite of a busy training schedule, I have not gotten any faster. 

Last Sunday I ran the King’s Runner 10k, a prep race for the Hapalua Half Marathon. Both races are put on by the same great folks who produce the Honolulu Marathon. I had two goals, 1) to see how hard I could push myself, and 2) to trigger a heart event that so far has eluded detection. I was successful in both.

My heart has been an issue for some time now. We thought we had it licked, until it showed up last December at the marathon. Since then my cardiologist has been doing appropriate testing, in order to get a clear diagnosis. I have had an echocardiogram and worn a full time ekg monitor for fourteen days. Nothing to report, yet, but the results of the EKG are not in.

The idea behind marginal gains is that a number of small improvements can add up to a large overall improvement. Consider a bike. Imagine exchanging one part for another that works just as well but weighs one ounce less. Will it make you faster? No. But repeat that exercise sixteen times and you shave a pound off the weight of the bike, enough to change the outcome of a race. 

On a recent morning I was driving to my favorite beach where I swim regularly, only this time it was to do a time trial. As I approached the park entrance I felt my mood change. It was as if a cloud passed over the sun. Fear? No, not that. But similar. Much less intense than fear, but pretty much the same sensation. 

January is the time we promise we'll do better. Better eating habits. More exercise. Less booze. Mostly personal stuff. Something that should be on that list but too often overlooked is better sleeping.

We start with fuzzy ideas. Good intentions, but lacking clarity. It's hard to measure success, or the lack of success, without a clear statement of what it is we are trying to accomplish.