Monday, December 19, 2011

Yay!!! It was warm enough for me to run outside

I'm working a lot of half days this week so I'm not running on the treadmill. Today it was almost 50°F so I ran on Hines drive :)

Swim went well too, don't know why but I swam pretty strong today. I got in the pool a little later than normal so I had to split the lane with others :(

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Week ending 12/18/11

Legs feeling much better this week, I did all of my easy runs easier than before. Instead of building the speed through the runs I kept the treadmill down at 8:10 to 8:20 on monday, tuesday and friday.

I did have a run issue during the week...I didn't eat very much on tuesday night which left me unable to complete my intervals on wednesday morning. I got through two of the intervals and then bagged the rest of the workout. I was completely out of energy that day. I completed the intervals as planned on thursday morning.

Swimming is going OK, I bagged wednesday's swim and swam longer on friday to make up the yards. I'm still able to come in low 1:20's on 100's, a lot of this week's workouts will be on a 1:35 send off so It will be a little harder.

Biking is going well, I'm still doing ~1:10 per workout and trying to keep in the highest part of each training zone. Saturday I had several 2 min Zone 5 intervals which I have not done well on in the past, I was able to start at the low end and finish them at the higher end of the zone. I'm really hoping to bring my FTP up well over 230 this summer which should get me near 3.7 watts/Kg. Ideally I would like to be closer to 4.0 but that may still be a year or two away. If I can get those 10 watts I think I will be able to get closer to 3 hrs at the Little Smokies on the bike and still have a good run.

The only real concern I have now is my weight again. I'm a little heavier than expected and have started my food log again (not the online one) to help me realize how much I'm eating.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Legs feeling better now

My legs have been pretty sore for the last two weeks despite my reduced off-season volume. I have been pretty consistent with running 6 days a week but have recently started biking a bit harder.

Because of that I think I've not been able to recover. Starting this week I decided to run my junk mile days easier like I probably should be. Instead of pushing monday and tuesday to mid 7 min/miles on the treadmill I've kept it in the low 8's.

Today I felt much better on the bike and now afterwards I'm not nearly as sore. Hopefully this is the solution to that problem.

With the 100/100 challenge starting on ST in 2 days I might actually bump up to 7 days. Most likely I will only be running 30 min on saturday in addition to what I'm doing now but that also depends on how I feel.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

What I'm working on now

Like last winter I'm spending a lot of my time working on my running. I can run a long time but not really that fast so I'm doing something about it.

The recent 10K of 42:28 shows that the work has been paying off. I probably won't get another 10K in until the spring when it gets warmer. I'm been debating on a goal but instead of that I might just going to work on speed and whatever I get is whatever I get. I would like to be under 40 min but I'm not sure if that attainable. I'm going to need to drop from 6:51 to 6:27 or ~24 seconds per mile. I'm thinking that's a pretty tall order and maybe going under 41 min would be a better goal, that would be running 6:35's.

Ultimately I need to go as fast as I can in triathlon so without goals I won't be disappointed or held back. Since paces are set by recent results all of my speed work stimulate improvement.

My basic running week goes like this:
Mon run 4 miles
Tue run 5 miles
Wed run 6 miles with VO2 intervals
Thu run 4 miles
Fri run 6 miles
Sat off from running
Sun run long (12 miles now)

Running during the week is mostly on the easy side. I run a little easier on monday and thursday to help recover from the hard workouts, the other runs are a little quicker pace but not quite fast. I'll run as fast as 7:30's on tuesday and friday but no faster.

I'm doing this while still training on the bike and in the water. Swimming is still going well. When I get the workouts for this week I may change the paces depending on how I feel.

On the bike I'm riding pretty hard and only doing the prescribed workout, I am not addding any extra so I can kill the intervals. I'm using 225 for an FTP and am hitting the top of the zones so I'll keep them there for now. They are hard but I'm not ready to raise them yet.

I plan to keep the volume of the swim and bike the same until it's time to get ready for Triple T which happens to be ~23 weeks away. When I get closer I would really like to get 10+ hours on the bike for ~10 weeks while keeping the swimming the same.

Week ending 12/11/11

Pretty good week with 6 days of running 3 days of swimming and 3 days of biking.

Swimming:
Made all of my intervals but had to swim at Schoolcraft on saturday because of a swim meet going on at the Rec Center. Water was normally warm but still a decent workout. Dropped some of my send off times to 1:35.

Biking:
3 days, made the top of all the intervals everything going well. A little twitch in my left quad had me a little worried but I've been training through it. It's not really unexpected since I've been going harder on the bike.

Running:
All indoors on the treadmill and the LRC track. Wednesday's intervals went as planned although they were tough. I had a little twitch in my left calf as well but like in my quad, I'm training through it as well.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

165 Cranks

I forgot to mention that Last tuesday (11/29) I started riding with 165mm cranks on my Felt S32 which is on my trainer right now. I don't know if they are better for me or not but I have been putting out slightly more power in the last week.

It could be that I'm fairly well focused on bike training right now or it could be that they work better for me. After about 6 weeks (mid January 2012) I'll change back to the 170's and see if there is a difference.

Monday, December 05, 2011

Thoughts on week ending 12/4/11

Swim
I Felt tired on Monday, swam about 1000 yards and then got out, don’t know why.
Wednesday swim went well, felt strong in the water despite the hard run earlier in the day. I skipped Friday’s short swim because I had stuff to do.
Saturday swim went well despite feeling tired; I made or beat all of my intervals. Finished the week with 8000 yards

Bike
Since I was on the trainer all week I just wanted to get the work done so I did not try to extend any of the rides for junk miles. When starting I warmed up until I felt my muscles burning slightly, turned on the fan and rode another 5 minutes. After that I went into the planned workout. All of them went well. Finished the week with 3:40 on the bike.

Run
Still working on speed
Mon 4 miles on Treadmill
Tue 5 miles on Treadmill
Wed 6 miles with intervals on Treadmill
Thu 3.7 miles (30 minutes) on Treadmill
Fri 6 miles and was able to run outside
Sun 12 miles on LRC track
Felt OK all week, Wednesday’s intervals were good mainly because they were short, Sunday I felt strong and negative split the run by a few minutes.