Tuesday's swim

Felt pretty good in the pool, a swimmer friend didn't show up so I swam my favorite workout. Warm up: 200 swim, 100 kick, 200 swim, stretch. 4 X (200 pull-catch up, 200 moderate, 100 kick, 100 hard, rest 1 min), 10 X 50 odds non-free, 200 cool-down. I started to go to work and hour earlier this week cuz Justin started school and am starting to feel it. Going to have to tape my shows that start after 9pm so I can go to sleep earlier.

Monday's run

Got back to training on monday, RHR was 50-51 which is much closer to normal. -------- 6 miles in 55 min, HR 143, felt really strong and was tempted to go further and faster. Going to split the long run into 2 runs this week doing 10 miles in the morning and then 10 miles in the evening, probably on thursday. I will put the 20 mile run in the next period.

Sunday

I worked the transition area at the Island lake triathlon with my club and had a fun time despite the rain. People were very nice and the post race food was great too. Feeling much better today, heart isn't pounding like friday but I won't start any training untill tomorrow. Depending how I feel, I will probably run about an hour or swim the same time.

Friday

Friday's ride was 38 miles in 2:00:00, HR was 129 and generally felt tired. I am starting to feel signs of overtraining and will take the weekend off. First sign that tells me I'm over trained is that my resting HR has been about 55 bpm which is about 5-6 beats higher than normal and my heart feels like it is pounding at rest. Second sign is on the bike ride, for the speed I was rolling I should have been closer to 140 bpm, I couldn't even get my HR up against the wind, I generally felt tired on the bike and couldn't do much to get the HR up. I've felt this before and won't fall victim to it again. Going to see how I feel on monday and decide what to do then.

Thursday's swim at lunch

Feeling much better this morning. Last night I drank 24oz of gatorade and 24oz of accelerade when I got done with the run and it kept me up untill midnight so I slept in an extra hour this morning and got to work about 730am. -------- Swam 1500 yds during lunch in about 30 minutes. Still don't have the speed in the pool that I had last spring but in open water I seem to be really fast with or without a wetsuit. Maybe it's cuz I'm training much harder on the bike and run now and I'm just tired out when it's swim time. I have some bike work to do later today if it doesn't rain, not hard just some big gear work again.

Run at Sylvania 

Just getting on bike after swim at Sylvania 

18 mile run

Another breakthrough run. 18 miles, 3:09:00, (10:30 min/mile) HR 148, weather was 85 degrees and very humid. This run really took a lot out of me. My calculators say 1800 Calories used but I only took in 600 and I felt like I was nearing a bonk at the end. Going to have to discuss this with someone to get some answers about calorie intake. Next week has a 20 mile run planned and after that I go into race-like preparation during my build period. It is possible that I will break that run into two 10 milers (morning and afternoon) and do the 20 in the build period. I will definitly take it easy tomorrow.

Tuesday swim

2500 yds: 300 warm up, 4X500, 200 cool down. Getting bored in the pool. It isn't new like it used to be, now it is work, open water is so much more fun. The club swims will start in a couple of weeks and I'll need it for motivation.

A nice smooth end to a week's training

Sunday saw a 1500 meter swim (0:29:00), 37.1 mile bike ride (1:53:00) and a 4 mile run (0:36:05). Kind of warm but pleasant. I was a hour short of my training goals this week cuz I skipped some of my run time. That's OK cuz I got the milage in that I planned. A tough week is ahead of me again and a tougher one after that. The upcomming week will see an 18 mile run and then a 20 next week. I feel those are the most important workouts of the whole base period for me. This is the last base period (Base 3) then I will move into a Build and then a Peak and Taper all ending with Ironman Florida. Thinking of taking a month off after that and then getting very serious about finding run speed for next year.

Saturday's bike ride

Like yesterday, pretty uneventful. 70 miles, 3:43:20, HR 136. Out to Island Lake, met Roman and yakked a bit, looped through Kensington, back through Island Lake and then back home via 7 mile. Legs seemed a bit tired today.

Friday's run

Kind of uneventful. I cut run from 45 min to 30 min so I wouldn't go over my alloted mileage for the week by too far. 1 mile warmup, 1 mile fartlek, 1 mile cooldown. Ran at Bally's cuz of the rain outside. Legs are still a little sore but the soreness is not in the joints, it is in the muscles so that is a little good news for me.

Thursday's swim and ride

Pretty easy going today, 30 minutes in the pool doing balance and stroke mechanics. Swam approx 1000 yds.

A little bit more difficult on the bike. 1 hr ride consisting of a warmup, cooldown and 35 min of big gear riding. 5 minutes of 60-70 rpm then 5 minutes of spinning repeated 4 more times. Not too hard but enough to get the HR about 145ish on the big gear stuff. Still a little sore from yesterday's run but overall I felt better after I got off of the bike than this morning.

Wednesday's long run

The longest run to date, 16 miles. Went out easy, kept HR at 145 reguardless of pace. At 8 miles I let the HR go up to 148 and at 10 miles I let it go up to 150. Total time of 2:46:44, ave HR of 147 bpm. First half of the run I was near 10:30 min/miles and the last half I was near 10:15 min/miles. Legs a bit tired after run but lungs were feeling really good. Pace seemed good, the next long run I will hold 145 for a bit longer than half way to make sure I don't overdo it. Swim and bike tomorrow, will probably take it easy to help recover from today.

Swim day

Took it easy in the pool, just 2400 yds in about an hour. Still feeling sluggish from the weekend. Next week I think I am going straight distance for the allotted time to work on pacing. Pool swimming seems to be slow right now, I'll just go with it and pick up the distance a little while sticking to the plan.

Race day --- Sylvania Triathlon

Good race day, got close to most of my goals and the overall time is where I wanted to be. First, the day started off with a weird noise from the back of my car. 5 O'clock in the morning on race day and I think I have a bearing problem or something. Turns out it was a strap vibrating on my bike rack of which I used for the first time in quite a while. --------


The race, a very flat course with a NE wind, about 75 degrees and partly cloudy.--------


I get there later that I wanted to, not late, but not really early either. I get checked in (which went pretty fast) and find my assigned transition spot. It turns out to be an excellent spot at the end of the second rack from the bike exit. Get the bike set, wait in line 10 minutes to go to the bathroom and ran out of warm up time (the time I normally warm up on the bike). Get the transition area set, get the wetsuit on (yes, it turned out to be a wetsuit race) and ran down to the water. Got a good swim warm up and get staged the the start, I'm in the 4th wave. Boom!!! The cannon goes off and I'm sprinting in the water. I must have sprinted about 200 yds cuz I got tired out and had to settle into a groove earlier than I wanted to. I didn't think I was that far out but I guess I was and the sprint was longer than planned. Well, I'm winded but still settled in and found a pair of feet to follow and stuck with them. We swam by a bunch of people but I lost him about 200yds to go. Got out of the water and ran fairly well to the transition area. I wound up swimming 0:25:51, just better than my goal but the timing mat was at the transition area, not at the water exit so I was actually about a minute faster than that.


Out of T1 (1:16) and on the bike, rode out fast cuz of a slight tailwind, after a while we turned north into the wind on an abbrasive road, I caught several people there. Then we turned east again and into some more wind, it had to be a 10 to 15 mph headwind cuz it was killing most people but being as short as I am, it doesn't affect me as much, I probably past the most people on that section. About 1.5 miles to go I change gears so I bring my cadence up to about 100 rpm to get ready for the run. Bike time 1:08:54, average HR 168 bpm, not too far off of my goal of 1:08:00


Into T2, about average time for me, (1:33) then off on the run. Started at 8 min/mile pace then it dropped to 8:30 which I kept for the rest of the run. That's good for me but I expected better. My legs went as fast as they could carry me and that's all I could hope for. Run time of 0:52:13, average HR of 167 bpm.



Yes, I know the bike HR was higher than the run. Here is my explaination. At the beginning of the bike my HR was in the 170's for the first 5 miles or so then it settled in about 164. When I went into the wind it got up to about 169. For the run it flattened out very quickly and stayed in the high 160's the whole way. I sure didn't leave anything out on the course, not even on the run even though the HR numbers point that way. I seem to be able to handle the suffering on the bike much better than the run, maybe that's cuz I came from cycling. While training for Ironman, I practice running slow so I'm no surprised that my 10K times are not really fast, I will work on that next year. One word to decribe the way I felt during the race would be "Durable." Total time for the race 2:29:45, just under my goal of 2:30:00.

syl04 swim exit 

syl04 me and justin 

Saturday's training

Not much to say, swam a little and then cut bike to get ready for the race on sunday.

Friday's brick

Had a little built up energy in me so I did my brick a little harder than I planned. 18 mile bike at 0:56:00, 20.2 mph, 4 mile run in 0:33:16, 8:19 min/mile pace, that is fast running for me but I felt great. Today was a speed work day for running allready, I just did the whole thing fast instead of doing a fartlek. This is one heck of a confidence booster going into a race. I have a new way of thinking for the run now, kind of hard to explain but I got it from a guy on Slowtwitch.com. As well as concentrating on running form, I just go through my body checklist, first I say "Legs, are you OK?" then they reply with a yes/no, then I say "Lungs, are you OK?" they they reply with a yes/no, then I check my stomach, feet, head, arms or whatever else that I am using. Sounds kind of silly but it seems to be a form of inspiration when needed. Tomorrow is an easy 2 hour bike followed by a 2 to 3 mile easy run. Probably swim a little bit too to work on left sided breathing and to have some fun.

Thursday's swim

Went to Trout Lake to swim. Swam with my club jersey on and wanted to know if there was going to be any speed difference with it. I figured that it would be near 1 minute a lap and it turns out that it didn't really affect my speed in the water. The time was very close to my non-wetsuit time from last saturday but I feel some more testing is needed and that gives me an excuse for more open water swimming. -------- I saved my bike ride from yesterday for today so I could do a brick when I get home from work. Nothing hard, just a smooth ride followed by a fartlek run.

Strong Run

After yesterday's swim I thought that my run today was going to drag on but after I did my first gel at 3 miles, my mind and body perked up and I felt really great. So good that I had to be carefull not to run to fast for a base run. 10 miles, 1:35:41, HR 149, nice partly cloudy day near 75 degrees. I've been doing GU now for over 2 weeks and feel its effects are about the same as Cliff, maybe the pickup is a little faster but definitly lasts just as long and easier to get out of the package. I'm going to tape the gels to my bike for the race this weekend instead of using the flask to see how it works. I really felt that I could have gone a lot further today and am looking forward to the longer runs in the next couple of weeks.

Blah-Blah-Blahhh swim

Today's swim was just Blaaahhhh!!! Supposed to be 45 minutes and I swam 35. Just not in the mood for swimming. Seemed kind of drained of energy probably cuz I skipped lunch today. Can't wait to get to open water again later this week.

Monday -- Day off

A day off, I was tempted to swim easy but decided to sit at home, clean my bike, cook dinner, watch TV and generally just rest. Kind of got bored after watching reruns of "Friends" and "Seinfeld". Went to bed early to get extra sleep. ---------- The week ahead is an easy week and it includes a .75 hr swim on tuesday, 1.5 hr run on wednesday, .5 hr swim and 1 hr bike on thursday, .5 hr run test on friday, bike test on saturday plus some easy riding totaling 2 hrs and an Olympic distance race on sunday. The swim portion will probably be without a wetsuit so I have changed my goal of 25 minutes to 29 minutes. Still looking for 1:08:00 on the bike and most importantly 0:50:00 for the run. I'm hoping to reap some of the benefits of the basework I've been doing to help me with this race. This not being an "A" race, I'm not expecting to "Tear it up." Wish me luck!!!

Busy weekend

Kind of got away from the plan a bit but here it goes. -------- Saturday: easy long swim at Trout Lake with the club for 1:00:00, really swam by myself, then rode 57 miles in 3:05:00 HR of 135bpm. Sunday: easy swim to kill some time before Rhonda got to the park, worked on left sided breathing for about 1000 yds then 96 miles on the bike in 5:26:00 HR 132bpm. Nothing really exciting, just putting the miles in.

TGIF

Last work day of the week, avoided some arguments, fixed a lot of tough stuff with Tom's help of course and even squeezed in a swim at lunch. --------- OK back to training stuff. -------- Friday training: 1500yds at lunch left me feeling good the rest of the workday, maybe it released some stress, still looking for the speed that I had back in June, yardage has been low last month and that's probably the reason. I'm going to try to get back to 10,000 a week, even if it is really easy swims, I'll probably continue to swim at lunch about 3 times a week, I really enjoy that. The run: Since I cut wednesdays run from 2:30:00 to 1:45:00 I needed to make up some base time which is what I feel I need, so I changed my run today from 4 miles of speedwork (which is really 2 miles of speedwork and 2 miles of warmup and cool down) to 10 miles of base. Nice weather to run in, maybe 78 degrees 1:38:23, HR of 149. Very even run, felt crappy for the first mile 'till I warmed up then I felt great, did 1 gel at 3 miles and that was it. I felt as if I could have run several miles further but didn't cuz I didn't want to go over my alloted run time this week. Gettin' ready for my ride this weekend. Yee Haaaaaa!!!

Thursday's training

I swam during lunch, as previously said in the last post, then rode 33 miles on thursday evening. Road with Roman and a friend, a little faster that I wanted to (about 22mph) but I needed some tempo work anyway. Found a bruise appearing on my left knee from where I hit my armrest on sunday. I little sore but OK. -------- Weekend plans: friday: middle distance run, approx 10 miles, saturday: open water swim followed by a long bike (approx 100 miles), maybe a short run, sunday: 30-40 miles easy on bike followed by a 4 to 5 mile tempo run. Next week is an easy week again, will be going down to 8.5 hours of training to recover from the last 3 and an Olympic distance race in Sylvania OH on sunday. Goals for the race are 0:26:00 swim, 1:08:00 for the bike and 0:50:00 for the run.

Wednesday's Run

Took tuesday off too cuz it was Justin's birthday (my son). We baked a cake and went out to dinner. -------- Wednesday I cut my long run down from 15 miles to 10 cuz I ran out of time. Hines drive was flooded going east so I had to go west and run on the road. Nice run, temp was about 75 degrees, time 1:37:30, HR at 145, kind of average for me. I'm going to run another 10 on Friday instead of 6 and probably 5 on Sunday after the ride. 10 milers are really no big deal now since I've been going longer. -------- I swam this afternoon during lunch to get some yards in, probably do that again tomorrow. Tonight is a bike ride, gonna try to hook up with Roman if I can but 30 to 40 miles at about 20 mph is the goal.

Feeling much better after some rest

Yesterday (monday) was a nice rest day. I needed to heal up a bit from my incident on the bike on sunday. I didn't write anything immediatly cuz I needed time to cool off from it. What happened was as I finished the bike and was rolling back to my car, a guy in a small pickup truck pulled out from a parking spot right in front of me. I was going about 5 mph and went over the bars as I locked up the front brake. As I got up he was laughing, I asked him how many beers he had, then he shut up. I should have called the police. Another man in a car saw what happened and asked me if I was OK, I politly said I was fine and thanked him for checking on me. -------- I took a nap yesterday to get caught up on some rest, then went food shopping. Today (tuesday) is Justin's birthday and I still need to bake his cake and get his present. We have allready decided what he want's and just need to pick it up. -------- Today's training includes a long swim, I will probably keep it to just an hour and maybe do it during lunch so I can get home earlier.

Weekend notes

After an unscheduled rest day on thursday I slowly got back into training. I just seemed tired after that long run on wednesday. One more hard week and then an easy week is waiting for me.

Friday I swam a little (1500yds), not much but OK. Saturday I got out on the bike for about 40 miles, flatted once but it was no big deal, when I got home I couldn't find the hole in the tube, maybe it was a valve leak. I was just getting some miles in anyway. Sunday was another big day, 2600 yds at Spring Mill Pond, 105 miles on the bike feeling very strong near the end, didn't have time to run after the ride but I feel that I would have run well. Monthly totals: Swim 22790 yds, very light for me, Bike 589 miles (what I concentrated on this month), run 76 miles, which is slowly on it's way up, I'm being very carefull with the running because of my knee. Total training time for the month: 53:55:00. Monday is my normal day off and I'm keeping it for another week.