Starting the taper for Triple T

According to WKO+ I'm at least 6 weeks ahead in training volume compared to last year which was a few weeks ahead of the year before it. Is that good? I'll see next sunday if more training volume equals better fitness and/or better racing.

Here is why I'm so far ahead of last year:

There are a few factors why I'm ahead of last year, First the weather was much milder this winter and allowed me to train outside earlier than expected. I planned to put more time into running this year like I did last year but got derailed a few times. Still with all those issues I was still running stronger than last year.

Second, I signed up for a training camp with HFP in late March and had to prep for it. (3/26 to 4/1) I knew that the camp was going to be hard and got more bike time in beforehand, the milder weather helped but knowing I had to prepare made me start earlier this season. About the Camp...It was hard...much harder than I anticipated, here is a note I sent to my coach 2 weeks after the camp: _____________________________________________

The camp down in Georgia really shattered me, while I was able to do most things you gave me for the following week I was really tired for all of them and was sleeping 10 hours a day to recover.

I took last saturday off cuz I had some personal business and did a longer run, bike, run workout on sunday. It really wasn't until yesterday (thursday) that I started to feel better and back to normal.

Anywho, the camp was too much volume for me, there were 3 guys there that were much stronger riders than me, 2 that were a little better and everyone else was way behind me. Most all of the climbs I had to settle in near threshold power to save myself for the next climb and the next day. Some were so steep that I could barely turn the pedals over while standing (15-20%), most were comfortably hard (~5-7%) if I kept the power reasonable. I could decend with the faster guys with no problem even though I've never been in the mountains on a road bike before. On the runs, I was always at the front of the groups and there was nobody there that could swim with me (3 pool sessions).

Last week I kind of just went through the motions of the workouts, I skipped monday and wednesday's swims, friday and saturday didn't go well. Sunday I did a 5 mile run, 2 hour bike and then 5 mile run. I felt OK but struggeled to go faster on the second run.

This week has been much better, Wednesday was OK but the new shoes I have don't run very fast, it seems that I run 10-15 sec a mile slower in them (asics cumulus, I normally wear Mizuno Riders) I really don't like them. Yesterday I ran in my flats and felt so much faster. Tuedsay and Thursday bike rides went well.

Today's run went OK for an easy run and I might ride long today since there is supposed to be quite a bit of rain this weekend and I want to get the bike time in. I'll send data on sunday after the long run. jaretj _______________________________________________

As you can see I was blasted from the camp and really thought that I had made a mistake in going. The biking was so hard there was no way I could stay with the leaders, I road at threshold (3.6 W/Kg) up all of the climbs, some were several miles long and the leaders just road away, yes they were working hard but I would have probably had to be over 4 W/Kg to stay with them. All I could do was go as hard as I could and follow Mark L (if I could) cuz he was riding smart and just above my level. We road 315 miles in 5 days with over 30,000 feet of climbing. I'm going to try to make a seperate post about the camp.

Now the swimming and running were a bit different...On the runs I just stayed with the leaders, not expelling too much energy because I knew we had a lot of riding to do. They weren't running that hard anyway and it was nice not to be killing myself trying to stay with them. On the swims I just went through the motions and stayed even with the faster swimmers. I couldn't believe that most of them wore fins during the swim but I could still stay with them without any extra effort. (That's why I said there was nobody there that could swim with me)

Now the last reason why I'm ahead of last year is that I was really prepped for my Triple T camp and road that strong. I knew all of the courses and concentrated on riding the hills hard. Karen and I (and Curt) went down there on thursday evening and were able to get in 2 good rides on Friday and Saturday with a very strong ride on Sunday too. I didn't blast myself because I kept down the run volume that weekend and wound up staying near 1000 TSS points (in WKO).

So it took me about 10 days to feel like I was back to training well after the HFP camp in Georgia. Since then my longer tempo intervals have been +/- a few seconds off 7 min/mile and my biking has been a lot stronger. In the past I would have a very difficult time running under 7 min/mile while deep in training, now it's difficult but I have been able to do 40 minutes worth of tempo work on wednesdays.

On the bike I tested 225 watts for 20 minutes back in February (FTP 215), just last tuesday I did 3X15'(2') at 229,228,228 so there is a definit improvement there. It's at a point now that I may call my FTP 230 watts even before I test for it, previously I've only been as high as 225 at the end of the last two seasons and it's only May :)

So now going into the last 10 days before Triple T I feel strong and have a lighter training weekend waiting for me. As long as I don't do something and hurt myself I should do as well as last year.

Still things are going well, 3 solid week behind me with a few more to go until I go down to Georgia for a week with the HFP guys.

Swim
While still not a big focus I am swimming better than last year (which happened to be my best so far). I'm not a great swimmer but do OK. A week ago Karen and I went to a start and turn clinic at a local YMCA, I knew my turns were pretty good but it's the starts that I really needed help with. I know part of what I'm doing wrong but there is a lot I don't know about how to get off the blocks.

Probably the number one thing I do wrong is that I bend my legs while going into the water. I know I do it, I concentrate on not doing it but it still happens about 80% of the time. Another problem is that I don't bend at the hips enough to go into the water in really straight, I do more of a shallow dive and make a big hole in the water and I think that really slows me down.

Other than that I can get in the water without losing my goggles and something like a half sec behind my competition, maybe a full second behind someone that is really good.

The training has going well, there has been a swim meet at my local pool for the last two weekends so I haven't been able to swim on friday, that's OK since I've used that time to get another bike session.

Bike
I've been increasing bike time slowely but it's hard to get in extra time while on the trainer. I've gotten 4.75, 4.75 and 5.2 hours on the bike for the last 3 weeks, all but one ride on the trainer. The weather is supposed to be getting better this week and hopefully I can get some time on the road.

I did a FTP test two weeks ago and while I didn't do as well as I'd hoped I did do what I figured I'd do. 225 watts for the 20 minute period which puts my FTP ~215 watts. So It appears normal for this time of year and I kind of expected it while only riding ~3.5 hours a week for an extended period of time. I've gotten an extra ride in on the last two fridays and I think that will help me out some.

Run
A lot of work is going into this right now, the last 3 weeks have been at 36.5, 38 and 41 miles. It appears I'm done with VO2 intervals for now and into tempo intervals. While I'm able to do them they are a different kind of hard running. A lot of running in the low 7's is quick for me but I know doing them will help me out a lot. A big focus on Olympic distance this summer is probably why my coach is giving them to me.

Most of my running has been inside on a treadmill or on the track at LRC but with the weather getting better I'm hoping to do more running on the road now. :)

Everything is getting back on track

I got a little cold two weekends ago, most likely cuz I have been getting little sleep. Not because I couldn't I just was staying up and watching TV too late. Since I get up for work at 430am I really need to be in bed by 830 to get enough effective sleep.

I missed a few swims and swam two events in a swim meet while sick but am back on track now.

Swim meet at Brighton High School:
Our club "FAST" hosted a masters' swim meet on Feb 5th, Superbowl Sunday, and I had to be there to help run the timing system. I was already signed up for the meet so since I was there I swam my events as scheduled and just kept the option open to bail out if I felt too bad.

I swam the 1500 and the 400 free and while I didn't expect to do my best I did put down some good times for me at this time of year. The best I have ever swam the 1500 is 23:54, I seeded myself at 23:45 and came in at 23:45.57 so I was happy with that being sick and all.
The 400 went pretty well, I swam 5:58.16 which is about a half second slower than my best from 2008. While I'm not the fastest swimmer I did have a strategy...swim the first 100 strong, keep a good pace for the second 100, try to make the third 100 the fastest I could go and do my best to hold the pace for the last 100. I went according to plan and it appeared to work well for me.

Anywho, back to training stuff:
Swmming: Going OK, nothing new, I've been able to bring my pull sets in at 1:15/100 and leave on 1:30 pretty consistantly but swimming without them has been nearly the same. This week I seemed more tired than usual but probably just as fast as I've ever gone.

Biking is going OK, nothing new either. I've been basing my interval effort on 225 watts but that is probably a little high right now since I've been riding just under 4 hours a week. Last week I was just under 5 hours cuz I was able to ride outside on friday. I got my road bike finished and rode it for the first time on friday but only for about an hour.

Running going well, the last two weeks have been ~36 miles with short intervals on wednesday and longer intervals on sunday's long run.

So all together I'm doing well but I want to get more time on the bike so I may cut my friday swim and start riding on that day. I've got 5 weeks before my Camp with HFP down in Georgia and I don't want to go there unprepared to ride the distances on the schedule. Ideally I would like to be near 7 hours for 3 week before the camp.

Report on wednesday's intervals

Wednesday's intervals have come and gone and I still feel pretty good. I'm just about back from the hamstring problem.

7 miles including 5X4' hard 3' easy with warm up and cool down.

Started cautiously at 6:50 then progressed a bit quicker to 6:40, 6:29, 6:22, 6:19. The target was 6:20 to 6:30 so I got there in the last 3 intervals.

Looking back at why I had a problem, here is the chain of events that preceded the issue:

I had been running really strong for several weeks (~35 mpw) and had hit all of my goals in the intervals.

Most of my interval sessions were on a treadmill where I could set the speed exactly where I wanted to.

I was on the holiday break from work so I didn't have the same treadmill available.

My exercise patterns were slightly disrupted.

I was running on the track at the Livonia Rec center on that particular day.

I didn't feel particularly strong that day, most likely cuz I had just woken up ~3 hours before and had been fairly inactive.

I didn't feel warmed up that day but had done my normal amount of warm up at 15min.

I struggled to meet the speed required for the intervals on the first two of 5X4'(2')

I just ran the next two as hard as I could even though they were slower than prescribed.

I noticed a slight pain in the back of my right leg after the second interval, kind of ignored it cuz intervals hurt anyway.

I jogged the last one cuz I couldn't make the pace.

Cooled down normally and still had the pain in my right leg.

Just a note on how I know the pace...I have a Garmin 310xt and the footpod that goes with it. That gives me run speed while indoors but on the track it reads kind of funny depending on which way we run around the track and how I'm running that day. Since it's only on one foot it appears to record the distance of that one leg and assumes the other leg is taking about the same size step, that's not necessarily true all of the time.

The way I adjust the pace for that inconsistency is that I know the track is 10 laps to a mile, on warm up I look at how the watch tracks to the number of laps, that day it was reading low, I don't really know why. With the interval function of the watch it doesn't count out miles and I was doing 15 min warm up and didn't really pay attention to how it tracked that day, it could have been 1.9 miles and only counted 1.8 miles which would put it way off for that day.

I started the intervals very aggressively mainly cuz I had done them quite a bit with good success (this is the hardest of the VO2 interval sets) but should have eased into them a little bit. Combined with the watch being slightly off and me not really warmed up I probably started off way to fast, maybe as fast as 6:10 which is really too fast for me.

With that in mind it's apparent the I didn't warm up enough, started off too hard, and ran much too fast that day. Those things were what I was trying to avoid yesterday and it appears I did a much better job.

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.

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.

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.

I think I’m going to get away from facebook and start putting my thoughts here again.

I was looking at an update I did on November 5th 2010 and wanted to report on how things went.

Swimming did go very well, I had the best State Meet to date. I PR’d in the 1650, 1000, 500 and did OK in the shorter events. I even found out that eating Jimmy Johns before the 500 helps me swim better. I don’t know why but I swim well on a half full stomach.

Base time is on the brink of changing from 1:40 to 1:35 and I’m still killing the intervals. My shoulders feel good and I’m normally enthused about swimming. Most of the time I’m swimming ~ 2400 yds on Monday and Wednesday, short on Friday and longer on Saturday.

I was on the Mountain Bike a lot last summer, mostly 2 to 3 times a week getting ready for Xterra races, I got a lot better at it. I was on the road at least one time a week for the Tuesday brick where I did intervals with Gary and Jim during the bike portion. Despite not being on the road that much I still got faster there as well. In fact after losing muscle mass in my legs in the winter of 2009/10 I appear to have gained it back last summer and am currently holding in the lower 140’s instead of the upper 130’s.

Biking is kind of on the back burner right now since I’m seriously working on my 10K run speed. I will be 3 hours a week for a few months now, will probably build back up in February.

Running is where it’s at for me right now. I’ve been consistently getting in 35+ miles per week and getting faster. I did very well last summer but because of poor race execution in a few of my Xterra races it didn’t show like it should have.

Races with good running in them last year include the Martian Half Marathon 1:36:30, Dooby Duathlon where I run under 7:00 pace for all of the legs, Waterloo tri where I finished 5th OA, Battle of Waterloo where I finished 7th OA, Xterra Wild’s where I ran really strong on the trails and the Ann Arbor Turkey trot 10K where I ran a 42:28. I’m going to continue to work on run speed until it’s time to get back to triple-t training.

Xterra races I did this year:
Xterra Ft Yargo that I crashed out of.
Xterra Torn Shirt was a good race for me
Xterra Dino Versailles was really hot and didn’t go well
Xterra Sugar Bottom was a good race but poorly executed by me
Xterra Wild’s was a good race well executed
Xterra USA Championships was OK but did poorly on the bike, could be many reasons why but I probably had too high of expectations for the bike.

An update

Just a note to remind myself how I'm doing.

Swimming is going very well. I decided to ease back on the swim volume this winter and focus on running so I've been swimming 3 days a week between 2500 and 3000 yards at a time.

Things that I've noticed are:
My shoulders don't hurt anymore
I don't dread going to the pool
I get right in and kill the intervals
I'm noticeably faster now that I've ever been before

I think the reduced volume has allowed me to swim harder since I won't be going as far. It's not uncommon for me to bring 100's in under 1:20 and 200's under 2:50 when I need to. For the last few years I struggled to bring them in under 1:30 and 3:00. I swam 23:54 in a 1500 at a local swim meet, my previous best was a 24:07 :)

Biking seems to be going well too. While looking over last year's data I noticed that I'm 10 to 15 watts higher this year for the same type of intervals. I'm only doing 3 hours a week now, when the weather breaks I'll get longer rides in. Hopefully the trails will dry out quickly so I can get back on my Mountain bike too.

Running appears to be going well too. I've been consistently running 40 miles per week for the last 3 weeks and have only missed 3 days of running this year. This was cuz I hurt my ribs while snowboarding :(

The fast intervals age getting more comfortable and the tempo intervals are getting to be more fun than work. I enjoy running 7:20's (tempo) much more than before and hopefully this will translate quicker times in my short course racing and Xterra.

Speaking of Xterra, races I've planned for this season include:
Xterra Ft Yargo (Atlanta GA)
Xterra Torn Shirt (Brighton MI)
Xterra Dino Versailles (Versailles IN)
Xterra Appalachia (Indiana PA)
Xterra USA Championships (Ogden Utah) hopefully I can qualify

Other Xterra races I'm interested in but probably won't do are:
Xterra Last Stand (MI) interferes with Triple T Ohio
Xterra Scales Lake (IN) If I could ride with someone I'd go.
Xterra Sugar Bottom (IA) Long drive
Xterra DINO Logansport (IN) interferes with Battle of Waterloo on 8/14/11
Xterra Dairyland (Sheboygan WI) If I could ride with someone I'd go too.

This year so far

Since just before Christmas I had taken some time off from training. I felt that I needed a break before going into the next season so a few weeks off running was in order. I still kept swimming and had a very good month of it in December.

Starting in January I got back on the bike. I started off with 30 to 60 min of easy riding to get my legs back into spinning. Along with that I started to run ~30 min 5 days a week. For the next few weeks I did my EN workouts from last year and they were just boring. I could not stand to do longer intervals near FTP and frequently missed workouts. After 3 weeks of that I decided to interview some coaches, I really had my mind set on Mike Plumb again but I needed to know what was out there.

Now I used Mike back to 2006 and in my opinion he made me much faster on the bike. I learned a lot from his workouts which took me from a 1:08 in a 40K to 1:02's. As well as that, his run program taught me how to run faster at threshold as there was much more time spent there than I had previously done. That racing season had mixed results mainly because of my poor race execution at the big race and the fact that I raced entirely too much that season. I chose to go a different way the following season for two reasons...I did not like the swim workouts and at the time Mike did not use power meters on the bike.

In 2007 I went with Matt Fitzgerald's plans to take me to IMMoo...that race had mixed results too because of my inconsistent training. I honestly do not like to do Ironman races and was very demotivated for the 6 weeks before that race. Still I went 11:30 there with a disappointing run.

In 2008 I went with Matt's plans again with better results but aiming at the Half Ironman distance, a distance I really like. I had a good Triple T early in the season and what would have been a good race at Steelhead had it not been for the swim being cancelled. I really didn't care while racing that and pretty much blew off the run.

In late 2008 I decided to go with Endurance Nation for the following year. I started on the bike early October and rode hard on the trainer all winter. I had a disagreement with one of the coaches after purchasing my plan in January of '09 which was supposed to be specific to Triple T and wasn't so I decided to quit EN and modify the plans myself to take me through the season. I used those plans through Triple T and was very strong going into the race. The only problem was that I screwed up my taper, I set myself up to be tapered on Sunday and not Friday, those two extra days of rest would have made a big difference. So mixed results from Triple T left me unsure of the plan but a little wiser about tapering.

The rest of the 2009 season was spent focusing on the Spirit of Racing HIM and the HFP Wheelie Fun Series. I trained exactly as planned for Racine, executed the race perfectly according to my abilities and had the best HIM of my life. All of my goals were met and/or exceeded. The hard work on the bike and race execution paid off. The good performance at Racine was followed by another good performance at Breakwater which had a particularly difficult bike portion followed by a good run for me. The season ended with my 7th oly distance race of the season at Portage Lake near Akron OH. I did well, 2nd on the swim, led the bike but could only hold on to 3rd for the day during the run putting me 2nd in the series standings...Still a good result.

Now...after rambling on about the last few seasons...In 2010 I found myself not doing my prescribed workouts. I had nobody to answer to so I decided to go back to a coach or coaching plan. After interviewing with 3 coaches I decided on going back to Mike Plumb again for these reasons:

He made me faster in the past and I know why.
He now uses power as a metric in cycling.
His swim workouts are more in line with my goals.
He is willing to set me up of different races.
He has experience with my abilities.
I needed someone to answer too.
His fees are very fair

So now I've been back with him for 4 weeks. I've done every workout he's given me and I'm feeling that I'm getting faster already. The workouts can be tough but still doable.

One thing I'm specifically working on this year is losing weight. I was 148 to 152 lbs most of last season, I'm 145 now down from 154 last November and still dropping. My goal is to get under 140 lbs and then assess my situation then. That will put me ~10 lbs lighter than most of last season, hopefully that will translate into faster times on the bike and run

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Plans for the Off Season

Looking at my strengths and weaknesses I’ve decided to go back to work on my run and swimming again during this off-season. I need to run faster and lose some weight this winter :(

At Racine I rode a comfortable 2:25 and had a good run afterwards. The fastest bike split in my AG was a 2:19 so realistically I will probably only be able to pick up a few minutes on my bike for a HIM. As long as I can repeat that for next year I feel I will be in good shape.

My swims have been in the top 15% for most of my races but that is comparing myself to triathletes and not real swimmers. I would like to drop down below 22 minutes in my 1650 in the pool. That would be a little more than a minute improvement than I did last spring. I went to a clinic about 4 weeks ago and worked with a few coaches. They gave me a lot of little things to work on and I’ve seen improvements already. I’m able to swim long sets under a 1:25 pace where last year I was swimming near 1:30 for longer sets in training. My thoughts about my stroke are a little different now and it seems better. There are still things I need to work on to get me down to 1:20 per hundred for longer distances.

I’ve kept my swim volume at a medium level for right now to keep myself from getting shoulder problems. I’m trying to stay around 13,000 yards a week for another month before I pick it up again.

Running is where I’m going to focus my time this year. At Racine I was 20 minutes slower than the fastest run split of my AG. I ran a 1:44 and the fastest guy ran a 1:25. I figure that I could realistically take 5 minutes off my run time, which is about 23 seconds per mile. That may be a stretch but I feel it’s realistic.

I’m not 100% sure as to how I’m going to go about increasing my run speed. I’ve played around with the idea of going through Daniels Marathon A plan again which I think is a good mix of intensities for me. I’ve completed 4 weeks of building my run volume back up and have 2 more weeks before I would go into any sort of structured plan. Right now I feel a need to bring my threshold pace up and I think that the other paces will follow. That kind of training would include 3 to 8 minute intervals but I don’t know how to mix them yet. I need to ask questions.

Anywho, races and goals for next year are to match my best Triple T performance in the first 3 races and then drop 10 to 12 minutes in the Half. That would be dropping 5 to 7 minutes on the bike and about 5 minutes on the run. I still need to find a second “A” race for next year and possibly qualify for Long Course Nationals. Possible races include Spirit of Racine and Steelhead but I would really like to do something else.

I’m going to stay local for my smaller races instead of doing the HFP series again. That was a lot of traveling and despite the fun I had at those races I don’t really like all of that driving.

Lastly, I’m going to be taking a day off per week from triathlon training this winter. Not to rest but to go snowboarding and have fun. Expect to see some snowboarding pictures in the near future.

Now what do I do?

I've been chasing the HIM distance for quite a while now and have been so focused on particular splits that I haven't thought about what to do when I got there.

As early as 2006 I've wanted to have a good swim, bike near 2:30 and run under 1:50, I have allways fell short. At Steelhead in 2006 I was on my way but blew it on the bike while racing my buddie Bernie. In 2007 I went back to IM and didn't work on HIM at all. In 2008 Steelhead was changed to a duathlon, It went well but I really didn't care about the run since the race really didn't count as a HIM to me.

So there I was, half way through the season that has had mixed results and doubting my planning when I had the race of my life in Racine just shattering my previous best effort. Here is what I did different and why I think it worked this time.

Last fall I decided to go a different route for this year and joined Endurance Nation to work with their plans. I focused mainly on the bike for the whole winter and went light on swimming and running. The plan was 3 to 4 hours of hard bike intervals 3 to 4 times a week while running 20 to 25 miles per week of mixed intensities. It didn't have any swimming in it but I still swam 4 times a week for my swim club. I was swimming about 11K a week instead of 15 to 18K that I had done in the past. All of this was taking me about 10 to 12 hours per week, a few hours less than I had done in the past but with more intensity.

At swim meets I was slower in my long events while near the same speed in my shorter ones. At state meet I had mixed results but was very close to what I did the previous year. I was used to large improvements and they didn't come this year.

The run volume was lower than what I have done in the past but had more tempo paced runs in it. The longer runs were a mix of easy running and 15 to 20 min efforts at HIM run pace. I added some volume in the spring cuz I felt the plan didn't have enough in it to prepare me for Triple T. I still feel that was the right thing to do. My average weekly run volume was 35 to 45 miles per week.

My bike training had a lot of harder paced efforts. The long ride had several hard 20 minute efforts as well as some longer race paced ones. On tuesday the brick became a hammer-fest with 3 to 4 of us exchanging leads. It was a lot of 3 to 4 minutes as hard as I could go then 5 to 6 minutes of hanging on in the draft. I got comfortable riding around 250 to 260 watts during that time which is about 25 to 27 mph for me. My average weekly volume on the bike was about 150 to 170 miles or 7 to 9 hours.

Swimming took a back seat this year and I only averaged about 8,000 meters a week. Some weeks where higher and some where lower. I was swimming in a 50 meter pool which really helped get my breathing patterns ready for open water.

Getting back to blogging

It's been a while since I've written anything of any worth. I have raced 2 oly distance races since then...Maumee Bay and Ceasar Creek. Both races I trained through and did nothing more than take it easy the day before so doing the best with the state I was in was my goal. I was happy with both races and had started a race report for Maumee Bay but I've been so busy at work with our move and have been spending my lunch time working instead of writing in my blog. I'll do my best to get them up soon.

I've also had some very big weeks getting ready for Spirit of Racine and had put down two 18 hour and one 17 hour weeks before backing off. My taper went well and followed my Endurance Nation plan exactly as written for the last 2 weeks instead of adding a lot of biking and running like the previous weeks.

Training Thoughts May '09

I’m getting ready for another edition of Triple T and I feel pretty good about my training so far.

My goals were to get as much time on the bike as I could while slightly increasing my fitness on the run. My swim has really just been in maintenance mode to maintain as much swim fitness as I could.

The bike has gone well. I feel that I’m as strong now as I was last August. A lot of that can be attributed to all of the off-season work that I did on the bike. Instead of laying off the bike and working on swimming and running I was riding intervals on the trainer about 3 times a week. That really prepped me for the spring where at first I tried to get 5 hours on the road and built up to 7 and 8 hours a week. At my TTT camp I did 10 hours of riding which included a lot of hills which I feel really boosted my fitness.

I also purchased a new bike last winter. I got a Cervelo P2 (Ultegra Version) mostly cuz I felt it was the most bike I could get for the dollar. I’m not a die-hard fan of Cervelo but the bike fit me right, had the components on it that I’m familiar with, there was minimal things I needed to buy for it and the price was better than most other new bikes that were of comparable quality. All I needed to buy to complete the bike was an Arione saddle and a pair of Look Keo pedals. In addition to that I bought a rear water bottle system and a front Hed Jet 60 wheel. The bike is ~3 lbs lighter than my Felt S32. Is it any faster? I don’t really feel that it is but it’s new and a little more solid. The Felt has near 25,000 miles on it now and I’m a little concerned about the frame and fork.

The run training has been OK. I could be better but probably as the expense of bike fitness. I’ve been fairly consistent by getting mostly 35 to 40 miles per week for the last 8 weeks and 25 to 35 miles per week for many weeks before that. I feel faster this spring than I have been mostly cuz of the type of training I did over the winter which was faster than I normally run but not necessarily speed work. It was a lot of running that was about 30-40 seconds a mile faster than I would normally run. The only thing that I’m concerned about is that I don’t feel as durable as I have in the past, although I can put down faster miles I have yet to test it out in a long race. My HIM sim a few weeks ago went well when I got my nutrition plan back in order but this weekend at Triple T will be the next test.

Swimming has taken a back seat like I had planned. I really felt like the bike is where I should focus this year and I’ve given up swim time to get it. Still I’ve been swimming 8,000 to 10,000 yards per week and can still swim long distances under 1:30 per 100 so I’m very confident that I can come out of the water in fairly decent shape. State meet in late March had mixed results. I was slightly faster in some things while slightly slower in others. I was a bit disappointed for a while but since I didn’t have a swim focus time I suppose it was all that I could expect. I still haven’t gotten in a lake to get some open water experience this year but this is my seventh season and I’m still fairly confident I’ll be in good shape. Triple T is all time-trial starts so I can ease into it.

Pulling myself out of the hole

I know I've dug myself pretty deep but I knew that a break was comming and I didn't want to let up too early. I'm not down so far that I'm cronically tired, hurt or sick, just had a high training load for 2 weeks longer than origionally planned. This is essentially my tapering for the Masters State Meet. I have omitted swimming from this formula since I don't track it with WKO and will taper that sperately by reducing volume ~25%.

For those of you that are familiar with WKO you will know what I'm talking about.
Right now I'm sitting at a balance of approx -40 which means that my 7 day average (ATL) is 40 points higher than my 42 day average (CTS). I need to bring that to a +10 by next thursday without losing much of the training effect that I have worked so hard on all winter.

Here is where the number crunching starts. My CTS is about 520 TSS/week right now and my ATL is near 800 TSS/week, a difference of 280 TSS/week or 40 TSS/day. I need to drop my training so that I accumulate just less than 500 points in the next 7 days. Breaking that down 50/50 for bike and run I can spend 250 points on each dicipline.

250 for the run will yield about 20 to 25 miles of running and 2 to 2.5 hours of biking...Not much for a training week but my goal is to be strong for the swim meet. After that I will have 8 more weeks to work with, 6.5 to dig myself again and then taper for Triple T. This taper plan for the meet will give me some practice with WKO and how easy/hard it is to calculate my fatigue.

On a good note, I do feel healthy and have been able to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night for the past several weeks. I'm strong and have been able to complete workouts as planned but am no where near 100%. I'm not physicaly hurt in any way, my knees, hips and shoulders feel good and I've lost 2 lbs in the last 3 weeks :)

Week in review

I met my goals again this week with all 4 of my swims, 5 hours on the bike and near 40 run miles.

Swimming the 500's has gotten better. I'm tempted to add another 500 to the sets on monday.
I'm still time contrained on Wednesday and Friday has been consistant with 3000 yards. I'd like to get back to the 200's this week but we'll see how things turn out.
There is a swim meet next weekend that I'll be in so I'm going to cut the saturday swim and try to move the longer bike ride to friday.

Biking has seen 5 hours again with 2 of the rides outside but the longer one was on the trainer. I rode harder than I thought I could for that distance on the trainer by doing some intervals. I may only see 4 hours for the next week.

Running was at 38 miles with 3 days of that having a bit of intensity. Sat and Sun were just junk miles. If I had more time today I would have gotten the extra 2 in but the rec center closed at 5pm and I could only get 30 min in.

Next week will be a little bit lighter cuz of the swim meet but I will welcome the slight drop in volume. I will be hitting it hard for another 2 weeks then start to taper for the state swim meet. After the state swim meet I can hit it hard for 6 to 7 more weeks prepping for Triple T.

I"m up to 5 hours a week on the bike

I sure do not like the trainer but I have to get my bike time in somehow. I ride on the road last thursday was a good change, I wish I would have been able to go further that day.


All of my time came in late last week with a 1:05 on thursday, 1:30 on saturday and 2:30 on sunday. I was a little concerned that I wouldn't get the time in, I really wanted to quit riding yesterday but pulled it off, probably a little easier than I should have gone.


Running volume is not up to where I need to be and I've really have 3 weeks to get it there. It's not cuz I'm tired or time constrained, I just don't handle the cold weather that well. Running under 30°F is difficult for me. I would like to double run around my weekday bike rides and run 1 hour instead of 45 minutes on others. The weather is breaking somewhat this week again, hopefully I can run my longer run outside again like last week. Overall I would like to get about 10 miles a week more than I'm doing now so that would be near 40.


The reason I have 3 weeks is cuz I have a big swim meet on the weekend of the 27th to 29th and need an easy week of running to rest up. I need to be at my best for this meet where I will be swimming many events over the weekend including the 1650, 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50, another individual event and up to 4 relays. After that my training becomes all about biking and running.


For the meantime my swimming is getting better too. The 500's on monday are my longer intervals at around 7 to 8 minutes, the 100's on wednesday are my shorter/harder ones and my friday's have become a hard 200's day. I felt better on saturday where I swam meters but I wrote the workout so I knew how hard to swim each interval to finish strong. I'm not sure if I should pop up to 1000's sometime instead of 500's just to get the long distance in. I'm not sure I could count that high while swimming right now either.

The week in review

I'm finally getting to the schedule and volume I feel is appropriate for me at this time of the year.
Last week I got in a solid week of swimming at 4:20 and 12200 yards. Mixed up quite well and keeping the intensity higher than normal. My short sets are getting more comfortable and that's something I've struggled with in the past. Our state meet is comming up in 4 weeks and I need to get my 1650 ready to go. I will be swimming at least 1 other meet and it will probably be in Milford 2 to 3 weeks prior to the state meet. I'll be swimming the 50, 100, 200, 400, 800 (SCM) plus relays.

On the bike I was 30 min short of my goal of 5 hours but 4:30 on trainers is nothing to sneeze at. I was chasing numbers late in the fall, particulary TSS points (see note at bottom about TSS points), while I think that was a mistake, the quality of work was not. I got much more quality time on the bike than I had in the previous years and am further ahead this season than I have ever been. I will credit Endurance Nation's Out Season Program for that. Now I'm getting in a longer bike ride a week and the TSS points don't seem proportional to the fatigue I feel from it. So comparing shorter harder rides to longer easier paced rides with TSS points doesn't really work. It seems to me that rides of nearly the same duration can be compared with TSS to distinguish intensity.

I ran 4:30 for 32.5 miles with a considerable amount of intensity added that I'm getting very comfortable with. Again Endurance Nation has helped me with run speed but I feel that there is not enough run volume in their Out Season plans. Another day or two of easy running would make running better. If you go that route, make sure that you can complete the workouts in the plan for the first 4 weeks before you add anything. They are very tough and remind me a lot of Daniels Marathon A plan.

I would like to hold these volumes untill it gets warmer outside where I can put in more bike time. One of my goals this year is to be so much stronger on the bike that running afterwards seems easy. Obviously I would like to improve my swimming and running but I feel that the most bang-for-the-buck will come from cycling right now.

Lastly, I have been paying close attention to the amount of sleep I have been getting. I got sick during the last week of January and noticed that I was averaging less than 7 hours of sleep a night. To get more and better quality of sleep I've stopped drinking pop (soda pop for those of you that don't live in SE Michigan) after 4pm, started logging my sleep time and made a good effort to be in bed before 10pm.

TSS points is a way of quantifing a training session. It takes into account the duration and intensity of a workout to produce a number that is related to the amount of training stress that is put on a person.

In detail, here is an explaination:

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/cycling/normalized-power-intensity-factor-training-stress-score.aspx

From Velonews:
Training Stress Score (TSS)- The TSS represents a calculated number that takes into account the duration and intensity of a workout to arrive at a single score of the overall training load and physiological stress created by that session. One hour of functional threshold (as hard as you can go for one hour) = 100 Training Stress Score points.

This schedule isn't working for me

I've got to rearrange my schedule cuz I just can't get the current one working for me.

Current plan
Mon Swim
Tue Run intervals
Wed Swim (lunch) Bike intervals Run short
Thu Run long
Fri Swim
Sat Swim Bike 3 hours
Sun Bike 2.5 hours Run short

I'm going to switch it around to the basic week that I have used for the last 2 years while keeping most of the workouts and modifing some.

Mon Swim long intervals
Tue Bike 1:00 to 1:30 Run mid distance ~ 1 hour
Wed Swim short intervals (Lunch) Run Long
Thu Bike 1:00 to 1:30 Run short to mid distance 30 min to 1 hour
Fri Swim mixed 200's
Sat Swim with FAST Bike 1:00 Run tuesday's intervals
Sun Bike Long Run short

I should be keeping the overall volume about the same but I'm going to drop some of the intensity from the long run untill I'm over 35 miles per week again.

Why do I blog?

At first it started out as a way of keeping track of exactly what I did in training. There wasn't enough room in the comment section of the "Tri Geek Spreadsheet" (which in my opinion is the best training log out there) and I wanted a way of documenting how I felt, the weather conditions and exactly what happened during the workout.

The origional title to my blog was "My journey to Ironman Florida" but changed it after IMFL cuz it didn't make sense afterwards.

For the last 2 summers I layed off the blog cuz I was just too busy but I really wish I would have kept up with it, that way I would have kept a record of what was going through my head. I do this strictly for myself but like to make it available for other people's enjoyment/amusment.

Anywho, some of my friends found my blog and started to read it, then people from the Slowtwitch forum started too. People kept sending me PM's for a link (which really surprised me) so I put it in my sig line.

I'm nobody special, I haven't ever won a triathlon but have finished 2nd twice when the big guns didn't show up. I very routinely finish 4th through 10th in local events. I have improved every year for the last 6 years. I keep blowing the run on HIM's up to this year where I did well on two of them.

I am completely unsponsered so I pay for all of my stuff. My thanks goes out to my tri club sponsors - Two Wheel Tango, Running Fit and Different Strokes for giving our club discounts. Cadence Cycle and Bikesport have helped me out with advise, sales and friendship. My tri club (FAST) has been responsible for some of the best things in my life.

I don't sell anything here but I do link to some blogs that do. I like to link to informative sites as well as funny ones. I routinely go to http://icanhascheezburger.com/ cuz I think it's so funny. There is a chance to win a major award at the bottom of my blog (as a joke) but nobody has ever contacted me about it.

I like to use "cuz" cuz I'm too lazy to write "because." I usually have too many l's in my writing and pronounce the word "coupon" as "cuepon."