Week ending 12/15/13

It's cold here in SE Michigan :(

No outdoor training this week at all mainly cuz I'm a cold weather weenie.

Swim:  In the pool 3 days this week with the last one being cut short.  Our normal pool wasn't open on Saturday so we swam in the small warm pool.  I could take about 40 minutes of that then I got out.  Good sessions on Monday and Wednesday while Saturday was not so good.

Bike:  I did not ride at all this week but did work on my mountain bike fork. I found out why there was no dampening in it, the seal was bad on the bottom of the dampening tube and all of the oil leaked out and into the lower.  I need to find a new seal and that may be difficult with such a cheap fork.  I've been looking for a new fork and have found that I can get a Fox Float for around $400.  My origional budget was $300 but I can get so much more for that extra $100.  I'm looking around to make sure I can find rebuild kits for the forks I'm interested in.  If and when I can find that I'll probably make a purchase in late January or into February.

Run:  I ran 7 days this week which were all indoors.  4 days on the treadmill and 3 on the indoor track.  I was getting bored on the treadmill so I did a faster workout on Wednesday where I took a Q2 workout from Daniels Marathon A program and adjusted the speed down just a little.  I may do that this week too just to get past the boredom.

Plans for this week:  Swim 3 to 4 days again.  Get on the bike 2 times at whatever pace I feel like doing.  Run 7 days again, maybe double on one of the days if I'm free.  The 100/100 challenge started again on Slowtwitch so I'll be logging my stuff there too.

2013 in review

I started of the year with a large running block.  I was running 50+ miles per week until late January when I started riding seriously again.  Unlike previous years I did not take any time off after my last race in 2012, I got right back to work after LCN in Oklahoma.

That running block had me running 8 times a week with key workouts on Wednesday and Sunday.  Wednesday was normally faster intervals, sometimes threshold, sometimes faster.  Sunday was a long run in the morning then a 4 mile run later in the day.  The second run really wasn't that hard to do but when monday came I was normally pretty tired.  All other days I was running easy, normally just half hour runs.

Schedule went like this:
Mon 6 miles
Tue 4 miles
Wed 8 miles
Thu 4 miles
Fri 6 miles
Sat 4 miles
Sun 14+4 miles
(I'm writing this from memory so I may have goofed a little)

In early March I made a trip to Georgia to ride in the mountains with my late friend Shawn Tyrrell.  We did the 3 Gaps out of Helen one day, a flat ride the next and 3 Gaps out of Dahlonega on the last day.  Riding was fun but visiting with friends was better.  It was colder than usual there, I expected 45+ degrees but wound up with low 30's :(  Still I got my riding in.

After a few more weeks of riding I made another trip to Georgia again only this time I was riding with the HFP guys.  During that week we rode about 320 miles, ran 5 days (1 long, all others short) and swam 4 days.  It was a pretty epic week.

It took about 10 days to recover from that week of training and it really helped me.  Unlike last year I was much stronger compared to the same group of people, instead of getting dropped by the second group I stayed with them.  When I got home it was apparent that I gained a lot of fitness from that week by comparing myself to my training partners.

A few weeks went by and I went down to Portsmouth OH during the Triple T since Karen was racing the AB and I already had the cabin.  We stayed the weekend so I could do some more hill training, I felt strong and just put in miles.  It was nice to be there and be able to ride the courses comfortably.

In a couple more weeks it was time for Long Course Worlds, I'd never been to Europe before.  I had a good time, I'll write a report about it.  In short I did about as good as I expected to do.  Since the swim was canceled it was turned into a duathlon so I was put at a disadvantage since I'm a better swimmer than a runner.  Karen and I spent 5 more days in Switzerland and had a good time.

After a few weeks of recovery I was ready for racing.  I did the Sprint race at Maumee Bay, a race that I've done the Olympic distance 3 times.  The swim went OK, the bike was fairly fast but my run was better than expected.  I think I ran a 20:30 which is faster than I've ever gone before, I was pleasantly surprised.

The next race was the Half at Caseville.  It was a smaller race so I expected to do OK, the swim went OK, the bike was pretty fast then the run was slower than normal but there was 7 miles of running on sand so a 1:48 was OK with me.  We got to spend some time with JD and Noah in Tawas so it was another fun weekend.

In August I did the Sprint in Sylvania, it was another race that I have done before.  I have done the Olympic several times and the Sprint once.  In fact the sprint race was my third race I'd ever done back in 2003.  Again I was happy with the result, I had a strong swim, a very fast bike ride at 25.4 mph and a fairly strong run for me at 21:07

In September I was at Rev3 Cedar Point, this was supposed to be my "A" race of the year and trained exclusively for it.  Swim was really rough on the NE side of the Point so they moved it to the SW side.  We swam through the harbor then outside of the breakwall.  Swim went well, Bike went according to plan then the run was within my expectations.  Finished a 4:53 and 3rd in AG (33 OA), that was the best I have done at a bigger event.

I origionally planned to go to Rev3 Anderson but the people I was going with bailed on me and I was looking for another race.  I decided to go to Rev3 Florida instead.

That turned out to be a very good choice.  First we had mild weather in October that allowed me to train on the bike.  Next we have friends that have a house down there that they allowed us to stay in for free.  Third the weather was really nice there for the race as well as the short vacation, and lastly, the race was put on really well.

As for the race, I did better than expected since this really couldn't be called an "A" race, the best I could catagorize it would be a "BB".  The swim was really smooth on race morning and I came out of the water in pretty good shape, 33 min is a decent swim for me.  The bike was really smooth and flat, it was the fastest 56 mile ride I've ever done (2:21).  The run was OK, a little slower than expected but it was fairly warm and this was a "BB" race.  Still 1:50 is OK for me and a 4:48 HIM, 2nd in AG, is my best result in a few years.

So it was really a pretty good season with Long Course Worlds, 2 sprints and 3 HIM's (70.3).  I didn't die at any of the races, I had good training and didn't get hurt.  I felt that the season progressed well with short races to work on skills and enough time between the big races to do well at them.

Now it's time to start getting back to work for next season.  It's been 4 weeks of doing whatever I wanted to do and I need get going again.  I've got 17 weeks until HFP training camp and 23 weeks until Triple T.  That gives me a little more than three training cycles before camp and four cycles before Triple T.

Week ending 12/8/13

Got a little behind on the running this week.

Ran 5 days for about 30 minutes at a time.  All of it was easy, a couple days outside but the rest inside on the treadmill.  Next week starts the 100/100 challenge on ST so I'll be up for that when the time comes.

Goals for next week is 7 runs with one being about an hour long.

I was in the pool 3 days this week but all pretty decent swims.  Monday 2X200 SKIPS (Swim,Kick,IM,Pull,Swim) so 2000 yds.  Wednesday masters 2800 yds, Friday masters 4300 yds

I was on the bike twice this week, once on the road and once on the Computrainer.  It was my first real workout on the Computrainer, it was OK, I was only on it for an hour.

I think I have the road bike fitting better, I found a stem that is a 120 -17°.  The bars are up slightly higher and out front a little better.  I moved the hoods a little higher after the ride on Wednesday and they feel better.  I think that's the last adjustment for a while.  Now all I need is a new seat, I'm actively looking for a Fizik Arione on Ebay, when the deal comes in the color I like I'll take it.

Week ending 12/1/13

Gotten to part of my goal:
Ran 6 days and swam 4 days, it was the most swimming I've done in quite a while.

Just a half hour for all the runs except for today where I ran an hour.  With the exception of the Turkey Trot on Thursday I ran easy for all of them.

At the Turkey Trot I ran a 21:00 for the 5K.  I'm pretty happy with that right now since I haven't been running much.  It's short of what I ran last summer but it was expected.  With that time I have some paces to work with
Easy 8:39
Marathon 7:41
Threshold 7:12
10K 7:03
5K 6:46
Interval 6:36
Repetition 6:11

I haven't done any testing in swimming yet, I may do a swim meet soon but not in the next few weeks.  I still know what I can do in practice and will use that as a guide for now.

No biking yet cuz I really don't want to.  I did some work on my road bike and mountain bike recently.  I replaced the bars on my road bike to something shallower, I need to find a different stem to raise them just a little bit.  I have a 120mm -30° and want to go to a 120mm -18°.

On the Mountain bike I replaced the rear shifter (right) with one I got on Ebay.  I didn't like the way the original one shifted so I found a M770 shifter (Deore XT 3X9).  This one has a little shorter throw to make a shift.  When I get it on the trail I'll see how it works.  I also removed the top headset spacer and mounted the stem right on top of the bearing.  I'm going to have someone at work make me a new one that is much smaller.

Getting Consistent (ramble, ramble thoughts)

I've had the last 3 weeks off doing basically whatever I want to do and now I need to get back to some consistent but easy plan.

I'm going to spend the next 6 weeks doing short/easy workouts just to get back to training.  Plans are:

Run at least 30 minutes each day

Bike up to an hour 3 days a week

Swim at least 4 days a week.

That should take me into the second week of January where I will still have a few weeks before I get serious on the bike again.  By then I will have decided what to do with my running plan.  Right now I'm leaning towards a Daniels type plan and I'll be a few weeks ahead so that if anything happens I'll be able to back it down for a week and recover.

I would like to get back to bigger run milage like I did last year.  Then I started running a lot in early November and was running 50 to 55 miles a week.  It will take me more than 6 weeks from now to get there so I don't hurt myself.  Realistically I will be able to hold that volume of running until late February/early March when it should be warm enough to ride outside again.  When that happens I'll bring my running volume down to 40 miles a week.

I'm still really undecided on my swimming.  I want to swim faster but the return on the time invested is low compared to running.  I can see myself swimming 4 days a week for a while which normally gets me some improvement but in order to get much better I'm going to need 5 days and some instruction.  I don't know if I'm capable of doing that while running a lot again.

Since I'm planning on going to USAT Nationals swimming is a bigger part of that race.  The best I've done in an Olympic distance race is a 2:10 and I need to go under 2:05 to have a shot at making Team USA.  I think with good swim training I could drop a minute off of my 1500 time and with good run training I could drop 2 minutes off of my 10K time.  That still leaves me 2 minutes short of my goal as I don't think I can ride much faster than a 59 minute 40K and still be able to run effectively afterwards.

Looking at the results from last year 20th place went 2:05, I think 2014 will be faster but just using that as a target I'm probably need to go something like:

22 swim

59 bike

42 run

1:30 in transitions

That is the best that I think I could realistically go in the best possible circumstances.

What do I need to get there:

Swim:  I need consistent training, I'm probably already there but if I got better that would take some tension off of the other sports.

Bike:  I'm already capable of that speed on a flat course.  I've done 1:00:30 at Maumee Bay in 2012 and I'm a stronger biker now than I was then.  Still I will need to be consistent in bike training and not able to slack off.

Run:  This is where I need the most work but have the most room for improvement.  The best I've run in an Olympic distance triathlon is a 43:30 a few years ago, recently a 44:00.  That means the run would have to go from a 7:05 mile to a 6:46 mile or a drop of ~:20 per mile.  Last year I ran a low 20 min 5K so that indicates I was a little better runner but still have a lot of work to do.

Going out on my own

Well I've broken away from my long time coach Mike Plumb after 4 terrific triathlon seasons.  During that time I've gone to Long Course Nationals twice, Triple T 4 times, Xterra USA Championships, local series races and a few Rev3 races.  I've also made USAT All American 3 times, I don't know about this year yet.

Just this year I've done particularly well with an expected mid-pack finish at Long Course World Championships, a 1st in AG at the Sprint at Maumee Bay, 1st in AG and 4th OA at Caseville Half, 1st in AG and 6th OA at Sylvania Sprint, 3rd in AG at Rev3 Cedar Point Half and 2nd in AG at Rev3 Florida Half.  This is mostly do to the coaching that I got from Mike Plumb at Tripower.org.

Now I'm moving on to do somehting a little different that having a coach wouldn't let me do.

Number one thing is that I'm going to work with my tri club FAST (swimfasttrifast.com) to put together a team of people to compete at USAT Nationals.  This is for anyone and everyone in the club regardless of their abilities.  I just want people to go and do the very best that they can.  In doing that I want to put together a few weekend camps at a local park where we can concentrate on triathlon all weekend.  I'm looking to do one in May, June and July.  Along with that I would like to put together a few single workouts to help people doing Long Course Nationals.

Personal goals for 2014 are to do the best that I can at Triple T in May, USAT Short Course Nationals in August and Xterra Nationals in Late September.

In route to doing that and being competitive I need to increase my run speed, I think I have plenty of endurance just lack the ability to run fast for short periods of time.  My current abiltiy to run a 44:00 10K in an Olympic distance triathlon is just not fast enough to be competitive on a national level.  I can only do so much with a fast bike ride and decent swim.  In the following posts I hope to document my improvements.  I've 46 years old and can't expect to keep getting faster for much longer, I think the next few years will be my fastest yet.

2012 Felt F5 that I purchased last summer

Bike Room

Joule

picts

Fwd: New Message

Me and some HFP friends

Shoe laces

I can't upload picts on Slowtwitch during the day so I'm sending them directly to you.  If you would like to post them there that would be fine with me.

This is the way I did my laces last year.  These are my Fuji Racers that I used at Battle of Watterloo last August.

On this particular pair of shoes I used the top 3 sets of holes unlike my road race shoes that I used the top 2 sets.

I like to use a heavy bungee cord type of stretchy lace on top (I think they were Yankz) and then the normal shoe lace on the bottom