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.