10/16/07: The week in review

The plan was to up the hours a bit, since my supposed peak week the week prior was a flop due to all of the flats on the bike. Out of a planned 16 hours, I ended up with 14.86

Swim: Plan 4 hours
Actual 2.75 hours, 3.04 miles

I got stuck in traffic on Tuesday, so arrived 15 minutes late. After Saturday's long run and Sunday's long brick, the weekend swim got left out. Having done two 2.4+ miles swims, I'm not going to sweat missing a swim workout at this point. I've come a LONG way swimming with the masters group and am totally confident about making the cutoff, at least based on the factors under my control....as always, I'll need some good karma from the open water swimming gods on race day...

Run: Plan 4.5 hours
Actual: 4.5 hours, 29.61 miles

Saturday's long run was a little bit of a mental challenge...Quite frankly I didn't WANT to run for 2 hours; however, there comes a time when you train the way you NEED to, instead of the way you WANT to. So it was with the long run....

I was probably thinking more towards how my legs were going to feel on Sunday's monster 6 hour brick, which brings us to....

Cycling: Plan 7.5 hours
Actual: 7.58 hours, 138.29 miles

Is it all about the bike? I think it's time for a revision...It's all about being able to run off of the bike....which was exactly the purpose for Sunday's brick from hell.

My legs were a bit tired when I started the ride from doing a 13 mile 2 hour run the day before. But that's what makes triathlon so much more demanding than marathons....you have to recover from workouts much more quickly.

Although it was a bit windy, the bike ride went well, and my nutrition really seems to be dialed in, alternating sipping water with Nuun every ten minutes with Perpetuem + some water, and a Powerbar gel every 45 minutes. No stomach problems at all :)

I intentionally took it VERY easy on the bike, wanting to have a good run afterwards. I got in a bit over 85 miles in 5 hours, which is about what I expected.

Starting the hour run, my legs felt like lead weights, also expected. After about a mile I fell into a rhythm, and just kept reminding myself that this was the last hard workout of my training.

One thing I've noticed lately is that I have to run pretty hard to get my heart rate up into zone 2, which bodes well for the race. In fact, I would LOVE to be able to keep a 9-10 min / mile pace on the run with my hr in zone 1.

I pushed the pace a bit in the last 30 minutes, getting my hr up without going overboard. I went 6.44 miles, for a 9:19 / pace....not bad

And that leads us to....drumroll please....Training to Date - 19 Weeks in Review

It's all downhill from here.....

That's right...after yesterday's 2 hour run and today's monster 6 hour brick....it's taper time!!!

Aside from the expected moodiness, I'm definitely looking forward to letting my body recover and showing up at the starting line healthy, rested, and peaked!

Check back in a couple of days for the week in review, and as an added bonus, a review of the last 5 months of training to date....

Live with purpose....Enjoy the adventure....

10/12/07: This Just In....

Gotta love finishing in the mud:



My shoes "were" white before the end of the 1/2 last weekend.....

Now back to our training, already in progress......

10/12/07: Today's MUST read....

In the Beginning... from Iron Wil at http://www.throughth3wall.com/2007/10/in-beginning.html

10/11/07: Peak Week - Part Duex

Can you imagine training for the most part non-stop for two years, focusing on Ironman Florida for 22 weeks, training your ass off, and having your fitness peak two weeks BEFORE the event? Me neither......

Since last week's hours were so rediculously low (it's amazing how 11.86 hours has become a rediculously low number of training hours), I re-wrote this week's schedule to push my volume back up to at least 16 hours to avoid what would otherwise be a 5 week taper.

So....this week kicked off with a 1/2 hour run on Tuesday and a relatively short 2300 yds in the pool. Unfortunately traffic was backed up and it took me 20 minutes longer than usual getting to the pool, so I missed the warmup :(

Still had a good swim, doing:

9x100 descending 1-3x3 on 2'10"

5x200: odds negative split; evens 50 easy 50 hard

Misc 50's


Last night I avoided the dreaded trainer once again and hit a spin class for 50 minutes and then immediately spent 40 minutes on the rollers. My balance has most definitely MASSIVELY improved on the rollers....I had them in the middle of the room and other than having a chair next to me to get started, I'm riding without a safety net

This morning was an hour zone 2 run with 6 30" strides thrown in to ensure I'm keeping up good form. So far so good this week.....

Live with purpose...Enjoy the adventure

10/10/07: The Week in Review

I think I've been procrastinating putting last week's numbers up because they were so bad. Although it was supposed to be the peak week of my training, it was anything but.

The original plan was for 18 hours....the revised plan was for 17 hours...actual hours were less than my last recovery week: 11.86....

Swim: Plan 3 hours
Actual: 3.1 hours, 3.98 miles

After missing Tuesday's group swim, I did a continuous long swim on Saturday afternoon, after doing my 3 hour run that morning. GO ME!! The long swim was 4300 (2.44 miles) in 1:36, with only a 30 sec break at the 45 minute mark for a few sips of water.

Running: Plan 4 hours
Actual: 4 hours, 24.4 miles

Adding an hour onto the 1/2 marathon made the long run fun, especially getting to cheer for all of the people still finishing when I ran the course in reverse for a few miles at the end.

Cycling: Plan 10 hours
Actual: 4.75 hours

Here's where the wheels came off, both figuratively and literally. I wasn't feeling good on Friday, and certainly didn't want to get sick, so I skipped the hour recovery ride...no big deal...better to rest sometimes.

4 flats = 48 miles in 4 hours (3.25 riding time) = disaster of a ride on Sunday. Instead of doing 112 miles over ~6.5 hours, I obviously fell well short.

The bright side, if there is one to the train wreck of a training week, is that my focus had been much more heavily towards cycling the last several weeks, so at least I've developed a reasonable cycling base, with an 80 mile ride, a couple of 90 mile rides and a century ride, even if I did miss hitting 112 this week.

Here's a look at my training to date. It was supposed to be 4 week blocks, three up, one back...Hmmmm....



To avoid what would essentially become a 5 week taper, I'm going to re-write this weeks plan and push the volume up a bit to 16 hours by adding in a two hour run this weekend and hopefully an ocean swim on Sunday, and start my taper as planned next week. This weekend's big workout is my last: a dreadful 6 hour brick (5 hour ride and an hour run).

Live with purpose....Enjoy the adventure...

10/09/07: The aftermath