Thursday

Run 6 miles 50:49 HR 138

Moderate run on the treadmill.

Bike on trainer 1:10 HR 134 153 watts
15 min warm up
6X8 min (2 min @150watts, 2 min @170, 2 min over 200, 2 min easy)
Finish out time cooling down

I've been feeling stronger on the bike but still been having trouble riding for more than an hour at a time so I'm just going to go with more intensity untill I can stand it.

Since I won't be putting in the extra time in on the bike I'm going to jump my running time up a bit to increase my training stress at least untill I can get the bike outside again.

I've been feeling strong lately and I think it's cuz I've been getting a lot of sleep lately. I've gotten 8 to 8.5 hours a night for 6 nights a week for about 3 weeks now

Tuesday Wednesday

Tuesday
Run 45 minutes 5.25 miles HR 139

Bike Spin Class HR 128

Wednesday
Run during lunch 35 minutes 4.3 miles HR 135

Swim 1:10 miutes 3400 meters
800 warm up
300 pull
4X500 on 9:00 (alt 100 hard/100 easy, pull) (8:20, 8:30, 8:15, 8:00 paddles)
300 cool down

Monday nicer weather

Run 8.06 miles in 1:10:09 HR 144

Finally warm enough to run outside.  About 35°F.  

I bagged my swim to get this in and probably won't make it up.

Training Thoughts End of January

So far this month has gone pretty well. I've done more biking that I did last year while holding on to the same speed on the run and improving my swim times. My shoulders feel good as well as my knees, hips and feet unlike last year where my shoulders were killing me. The treadmill running still stinks but the mp3 player has helped me a fair bit.

I'm 6 lbs heavier now than I was last January and I feel that's cuz I've haven't been running as much,  last year I was running 45 miles per week by now peaking over 50 but I didn't have as many cycling miles under my belt.  What's better? Well I can allways lose the weight and I should by April, I'd like to be near 144 lbs then as I feel I'm still overweight at 148 lbs now.  4 lbs in 2 months is very realistic weight loss, I've lost 3 to 4 lbs just this month alone but starting my cycle and not really watching what I've been eating.  I have cut out french fries but that is really it.

I made some good choices and some mistakes this week.

The good choices:
Running easy - I have been doing my longer runs easier this week (and last week) with the intention of reducing recovery time. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I recovered from every day running at that intensity. I do a lot of 2-a-days back to back since the weather is so poor and wanted to have energy for swimming and biking.

I ran tempo on Thursday after an easy run and a spin class and felt really strong. The easy run continued through sunday where I ran 1:20 on a treadmill at 6.8 to 7.2 mph (8:50 to 8:20) with an average HR of 134. Today I feel strong and ready to go again.

The bad choice:
This is not really that bad but I put too much effort into swimming this week and it took away from my bike time. Saturday I was really gassed from my swim (which was terrific by the way) and consequently my bike ride afterwards was really too easy to count as training. Monday's swim was hard too, which is also good but not what I wanted to focus on. I finished the week with 4:10 swimming, 4:15 on the bike and 4:35 on the run. The plan was to spend near 6 hours on the bike which is difficult for me on a trainer but not impossible.

Other than being being gassed on saturday I felt fairly strong this week.

This week's plans:
Mon Run 1:00, Bike Easy 1:00 (it's supposed to be warm today)
Tue Swim ~1800 Run 45 min
Wed Swim ~2100 Run 35 min
Thu Bike 1:15 Run 40 min with some strides
Fri Swim ~1800 Bike 1:00
Sat Swim ~4000 Bike 2:00 Run 20 min (bike/run brick)
Sun Bike 1:00 run 1:05

Sat/Sun 26/27 Jan

Sat
Swim 4250 yards about 1:20

Sun
Bike Spin class 1:00 HR 125

Run easy 1:20 minutes 9.3 miles HR 131

Friday 1/25

Swim 2400 meters about 50 minutes
600 warm up
300 pull
5X200 50 easy/50 hard
12X25 kick
200 cool down

Bike on trainer 1:15 HR 132 155 watts

Felt good on bike
15 min warm up
10X 2 min hard 1 min easy
10 min spin 150 watts
2X 4 min hard 2 min easy
Cool down with 150 watt spin

Thursday

I didn't want to go home before I went to LTF so I stuck around at work for just a little while longer and then just went straight there.

Since I was there early I added and extra 30 min easy run before the spin class.

Run 30 minutes 3.4 miles HR 137

A little stretching here

Bike Spin class 60 minutes HR 132

Run right afterwards 30 minutes 3.7 miles HR 146

Wednesday Swim Run

Swim 2600 meters
500 warm up
300 pull
4X400 on 7:00
200 cool down

Run
1 Hour 7 miles HR 141

Wasn't really sure where to put the priority, I decided late in the day to put it on the run since it was the longer of the two. (But not by much)

I was surprised that I was comming in fairly easily in 6:40 on the 400's. I put 6:30 in for a seed time for an upcomming meet since that is what I swam last year, looks like I'm going to beat that one.

Anywho, half way through the run I had to pee so I put a towel over the treadmill to save it, it worked. The second half I felt much better.

Tuesday

Run 45 minutes 5.2 miles HR 135
Bike 1:00 HR 128 139 watts

My running HR keeps falling and I'm not quite sure if I should pick up the pace or stick with it.

I normally use Daniels paces for intensity and I'm closer to the easy pace now than I've ever been.  
Friel HR training says my zone 1 is 115 to 148 and zone 2 is 149 to 158 so most of my easy running is deep down in zone 1 right now and I feel I should be training in lower zone 2.  Currently I feel strong but have lacked the motivation to ride on the bike trainer for much more than 5 hours.

Starting next week I'm going to be adding a different run training stress for 1 day.  Since I have historically responded well to 1 mile tempo intervals (and they are my favorite too) I'm going to find a place to add 3 miles of tempo.  8% of 35 miles a week is 2.8 miles which is close enough to 3 miles for me.

Monday 1-21

Business as usual

Swim 3000 SCM
800 warm up
4X500 as 100 hard/100 easy, pull, 100 hard/100 easy, pull w/paddles
200 cool down

I like the 100 hard/100 easy cuz the time goes by fast and it's easy to count but it sure is hard when it's done right.

Just for reference I brought the hard ones in at 8:10.

Run on treadmill (still too cold for me)
3.5 miles 30 minutes HR 135
Uneventfull junk miles

Sunday 11-20

Last day of the week went as planned.

Bike
Spin class, kept it easy since it was just junk miles
60 minutes HR 125

Run on Treadmill
8 miles 1:11 HR 133
Very easy since I was really only looking for run time not quality.

I'm starting to understand why we have easy runs...basicly to be able to do the next planned work out. Instead of running harder and needing 36 hours to recover, I ran easy and will be recovered by tomorrow morning and ready for a quality swim workout.

Training Thoughts 1/19

It's so difficult for me to ride much more than 1:30 on the trainer that I'm thinking of just making the best of that time. Untill it's warm enough outside to ride longer, I'll do some more quality work instead of quantity.

The last 2 weeks have been fairly consistant with about 11,000 yards of swimming, 5 hours of biking and 35 miles of running. I've been healthy and rested and feel mentally strong towards my training although I have had a personal problem that troubled me during the week. Good friends helped with that issue but I still feel like I let people down that trusted me.

On to training talk:
Swim
I feel very healthy and strong. Shoulders feel great unlike last year at this time. I feel it's because I've reduced my use of paddles to about 10% of my swimming compared to about 30% last year. I've gone back to 200's for a while and have been consistantly been doing repeats on 3:30 in a SCM pool. Last year at this time I think I was doing them on 4:00. I like doing the 50 easy/50 hard during the 200's, they are interesting and challenging. Next week I'm going to change it up a little and go back to 500's with 100 easy/100 hard one time and 100's and 200's with the other 2 week day swims.

Bike
As I said before I'm going to keep the bike rides down to no longer than 90 minutes and work on quality. I experimented with some FT workouts this week and felt good about them, they were hard but doable. I've been staying away from the spin classes only cuz the trainer has been more conveinent lately. I'll probably do the spin class tomorrow morning (sunday) as I'm going to be on the treadmill again. Still looking at targeting 5 to 6 hours for the next couple weeks.

Run
All my runs this week have been on the treadmill in contrast with last week where all of my runs were outside. Hopefully it will get warmer this week and I can move outside again. I really need 35 deg F to be comfortable. I bought 2 pairs of shoes this week, a pair of Mizuno Wave Rider 10's again and a pair of Wave Elixers. I've been wearing the Elixers since tuesday and am very happy with them. They fit well and seemed comfortable right out of the box. My older shoes were Wave Riders so I know the new ones will work when I start running long miles outside again.
I introduced a little bit of speed this week to break things up and make the run interesting but the bulk of my running has been easy. My hips, knees and feet all feel healthy so I expect to keep this amount of running load untill I move completely outside again.

Next 2 weeks will still have a lot of easy workouts, after that I get to run some more tempo and bike a little harder. My swim load will stay the same but possibly moving to longer intervals depending on how I respond to the 500's this week.

Peterborough is looking like it is comming off my schedule since I haven't found anyone else that is doing the race. Muncie is 4 weeks before Steelhead and is looking like a good tune up race since I have done it before. It would be a good place to work on my bike pacing as the bike course was fairly similar to Steelhead as I remember. I would intentionally go easier on the bike to see how I can run afterwards. Being a lower key race would take pressure off of me to perform on the bike.

Next week's schedule
Mon
Swim ~1:00 sets of 500
Run Easy 30 to 45 minutes

Tue
Bike 1:45 Moderate Aerobic
Run 45 min Easy

Wed
Swim ~ 2500 Base Intervals
Run 55 min Moderate Aerobic

Thu
Brick 1:00 Bike/30 min Run

Fri
Swim ~2400 Fartlek Intervals
Bike 1:15 Moderate Aerobic (might move to sunday)

Sat
Swim with FAST
Bike 3:00 (in my dreams :P)
Run 35 min with some strides (might move to friday)

Sun
Run 1:20 Moderate Aerobic

More from this week

I've gotten a little behind on the blog so here's what I've done. Everything has been inside this week.

Tue
Run 7 miles 1:00 on treadmill HR 144
Bike on trainer 1:00 150 watts HR 131

Wed
Swim 2700 meters
Run 5.3 miles in 45 minutes with 16 min tempo HR 147

Thu
Run at lunch 4.7 miles in 40 minutes HR 139
Bike on Trainer 1:30 150 watts HR 131 again

Fri
Swim 2700 meters

Sat Swim 3800 yards
Run 7 miles in 1:00 HR 135
Bike on Trainer 1:06 135 watts HR 119

Sun
Planned 1 hour Bike
1:10 to 1:30 Run depending on how I feel

Monday 1-14

A little tired from not sleeping well

Run 30 minutes on treadmill
3.5 miles HR 136

Swim 1800 meters, short swim to just get movement

Saturday Sunday

Saturday
Swim 3900 yards in the morning

Felt OK, led lane.  I liked the layout with some of the other strokes.

Bike on Hines
30 miles 1:30 HR 128

Cold and not very pleasant ride for me.

Sunday
Run on Hines
13 miles 1:47:41 HR 142
Nicer weather to run in. HR seemed low for this pace.

Friday 1/11

Swim after work, kind of felt a little off.

2350 meters
800 warm up
300 pull
5X150 :15 rest (50 easy, 25 hard)
12X25 kick :10 rest
200 cool down

Bike when I got home
60 minutes 160 watts HR 137
Got this idea from Clas Bjorling's post on Alternative Perspectives
15 min warm up
4X8 minutes moderately hard (174, 182, 185, 189 watts)
2 min easy between intervals
5 min easy

Training in the cold

For some stupid reason I thought I could bike outside today without any issues. The Weather Channel said 40 degrees but it seriously felt like 30 degrees.

Anywho, the only issue I had was that my feet were cold. Colder than I realized as I needed to take a few minutes and warm my feet at home before I ran. The rest of my body was fine.

Bike 19.9 miles 1:10:11 125 watts HR 126
Run 2.6 21:54 HR 137

Wednesday 1/9

Run after work on Hines starting at Northville Rd going north. Run up and over Cass Benton Hill 3 miles out and then run back.

Brisk Run 6 miles 50:35 HR 141

Swim
2500 meters
800 warm up
300 pull
12X100 on 1:50 (came in 1:38)
200 cool down

Tuesday

A bit easier today since I was pretty tired from yesterday's run.

Swim
2100 meters
600 warm up
300 pull
7X100 on 1:50
12X25 kick
200 cool down

1:30 on the bike trainer HR 129, 137 watts (143 excluding 15 min warm up)
Goal was to keep the power between 140 and 150 watts staying as close to 145 (70% of FTP) as I could. Just a long steady ride.

I watch the 2003 ITU Triathlon from Edmonton and the 2003 IM Germany while riding to keep me motivated. Just some tape I randomly put in.

AAAHHHHH!!!

Oh, I'm feeling last night's run now!!!

Monday

Since it was so warm today (63 F) I couldn't waste the opportunity to run long so I chose to bag my swim and extend my run. I'll swim on Tuesday instead.

Run on Hines drive 14.1 miles 1:59:57 HR 145
I was tired and really needed another gel but I stuck with it.

Training Thoughts

The past few weeks have served as a template for the next several. There are 20 weeks untill DATT and 30 weeks untill Steelhead, it's time for me to start getting serious.

This week was 14 hours long and I accomlished a more balanced week with respect to biking.
23% Swim
46% Bike
31% Run
For this early in the year that's a lot of biking for me, I really think that's going to be the key to next season.

I'm going to try to work off of this basic week for a while.
Mon - Run Swim
Tue - Bike Run
Wed - Swim Run
Thu - Bike/Run Brick
Fri - Swim Run
Sat - Swim Bike (Bike quality)
Sun - Bike Run

4 Swims Near 4 hours
4 Bike rides - 5 to 6 hours
6 Runs - Near 5 hours

Going to keep the intensity on the swim and bike but am going to wait a while to bring it to the run as I don't thing I'm strong enough right now.

Sunday

Bike spin class this morning 60 minutes HR 130

Run on Hines in the slight drizzle, fairly warm warm outside at 45 degrees F
1:13:19 8.76 miles HR 141

Weeks totals
10850 yards swam 3:35
106 miles on the bike 5:30
35.56 miles run 4:58:47

14:03:47 total hours

Saturday - The running streak comes to an end :(

I didn't really plan it but I have run 11 days in a row now and today will be the first day without a run. Still not big miles but I should finish the week with around 34 miles.

Much bigger week on the bike with 4.5 hours allready and have 1 hour planned for tomorrow.

So today I got a swim in with FAST, a little less yards but we had Dawn help some of us on starts. She explained some things I really didn't understand and still need to work on.

3300 yards in about 1:10
550 warm up
3X500 on 7:45, 8:00, 8:00
4X100 kick with fins
4X100 on 1:50 IM, free, IM, free
6X75 free on 1:20
Starts

Bike 2:00 about 40 miles 144 watts HR 130
Really just mixed things up to keep it interesting, put in an old Tour de France tape and fast-forwarded through the boring parts.

15 min warm up
10X3 min over 160 watts 1 min easy
25 min moderate, near IM pace 145 watts
4X4 min over 170 watts 2 min easy
10 min IM pace
finish out easy

Friday

Swim 2400 meters
400 warm up
300 pull
5X200 on 3:30 (50 build, 50 decend :20 rest)
12X25 kick :15 rest
400 cool down

Run on Hines Drive
5.4 miles 46:23 HR 142

Thursday

Spin class 1:00 HR 128

Run immediatly afterwards 20 minutes 2.5 miles HR 145

Bricking it today and I felt really good on the run afterwards although I had to pee pretty bad for the last 10 minutes.  I got a good stretching session in before the bike and after the run as well.

Wednesday

Swim 2700 meters
800 warm up
300 pull
7X200 on 3:35 (I had :20 rest)
200 cool down

Run 5.25 miles on treadmill
45 minutes HR 145

A new year but still a week before my next cycle

Bike on trainer
1:30 ~28 miles 139 watts HR 123
Mixed up intensity
20 min warm up
10X3 min hard 1 min easy (over 160 watts / near 100 watts)
10 min at IM pace
2X6 min hard 2 min easy
Cool down

Run on Treadmill
45 min 5.25 miles HR 145