Monday weigh in, April's totals, a new chapter..

Yowie zowie - holy irregular updating of the blog, Batman! A quick recap of last week: jury duty is a drag. This basically sums it up: wait in a large lounge with 150 potential jurors (fortuneately I brought a good book- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini) only to get told that we are not needed today and to come back tomorrow. In the end, I never did get called, but I sure did get some serious reading done!

So between jury duty, work and being away for the weekend, the totals for the week aren't exactly earth shattering. Here the scoop:
swim- 0!
bike: 185k
run: 38k
Hey, sometimes real life messes with my training schedule, just gotta "buck up little soldier" and deal with it.

So April didn't happen exactly as planned. I must remind myself that in the grand scheme of things this isn't a big deal. I'm only in month 8 of a massive 2 year 'base building' phase, so having the odd bad month is not a big deal.
Here's the numbers for April:
swim: 23.9k
spin: 11hr 30min
bike: 300k
run: 173k

May starts a new chapter. Training wise, I'm going to juggle things up a bit, but my basic week will look like this from now until IMLP. Mon- easy swim (2-2.5k), easy run (optional). Tues: long brick (100k ride, 40 min run) Wed: short brick (30-50k ride, 30 min run). Thurs: long brick. Fri:long swim, short run. Sat: long ride/short run. Sun: long run. Once in May and once in June I want to skip Sunday's long run and do another long ride for some tough back to back long ride action. I was thinking of grabbing a couple of fellow tri wienies and ride to Midland (about 190k), stay the night, then ride back the following day. Might be able to talk Cliff into joining me? :)

Last week I promised I'd talk to Hed about race wheels, I talked to "Speedy" the Canadian distributor for Hed and after picking his brain and discussing my needs etc.. I think we/I decided that the Hed 3 carbon would be a good choice. For the record, I'd recommend anyone in the market for wheels to give Paul a call. He spent over an hour with me on the phone discussing my needs, wheels, aerodynamics, racing and sponsorship opportunities. To me, time is a most valuable commodity and anyone who willingly spends an hour with me without having the need or pressure to 'close a sale' is OK in my book. Get in touch with him, through his website here. I'll let you know if/ when I pull the trigger on those bad boys... hmmm... I do have a birthday coming up... :)

Worst inaugural ride ever? Sunday weigh in.

Ok so the title is misleading, I'm sure it wasn't the worst inagural ride, but is sure as heck wasn't the best. Let me back track a bit... We had a fantastic weekend in southern Ontario, the weather was pretty much perfect, sunny with highs around the 24C mark. Bascially, perfect riding weather. I'm pumped. Friday was nuts. Work, swim 4.8k, eat, do house chores, run 7.5k, eat some more and prep bike. A very full day. Alot had to accomplished to get a clean slate for Saturday's first ride of the season. Fast forward to Saturday:
On the road at 8:40, want to start the season of with a bang and get 150 to 160k in. 10k into the ride, flat tire. Change tire, but now I dont' have a spare. I figure I'm only 10k from home, I'll zip back and get another. So I head home and figure that while I'm here I'll change the rubber in the backwheel to something a little more newer. Pump up the tires and I'm good to go. Ding Ding. Round 2:
8k into ride number 2, ssssssssss... damn, there goes the air - voila flat number 2. Ok, so obviously I'm having an issue. I take the rubber off the wheel and inspect the wheel - can't find a single thing wrong. No nicks, foriegn objects - nothing. A fellow tri-wienie stops and we shoot the breeze while I get back up and running - we end the conversation with maybe we'll meet up later and do some time trialling work. I think 'great!', I just maybe able to salvage this ride yet. Since I'm only 8k from home, I zip back and grab my last spare tube, refill water bottles and eat a banana.
Ding. Ding. Round 3:
I'm on my last spare, so I decided I better swing by the bike shop and grab some more. Better safe than sorry. So as I'm getting ready to leave the, who drops in? My fellow tri-wienie from round number 2. His workout was done and was about to do an easy ride home. I'm not into that. I came out today to log some K's and damnit that's what I'm going to do. I get 90 minutes into round 3, you guessed it, flat numero 3. Ok now I understand the Normann meltdown of Kona '05. Actually, I didn't go balistic at all, just kinda laughed, sat on the country rode and took my tire apart for upteenth time for the day. Flatted in a different part of the tube and still could find NOTHING causing it. That's the only part that cheeses me off - not being able to find the cause.
Ding Ding Round 4
Uneventful. Made it through the rest of the ride without flatting, had at least 150k on the agenda and in the end only manage to scrape togethor 115k.
Ding Ding Round 5
Got home, finished my chores just in time for the arrival of my M.I.L. Hehe, actually my mother in-law and I get along fine, I agree with everything she says and then Sally straightens her out. Hey, it works. :)

So the weekly weigh in is 24 hours ahead of schedule. Why? Tomorrow I must report of jury duty. Hey, I'm all for doing one's civic duty, but deep down I'll breathe a sigh of relief if I don't get picked. I also plan on re-taping the inside of my offending wheel, with the hope of that will solve my flatting problem.

Last week's numbers:
Swim: 6.8k
Spin: 3 hours
Bike: 115k
Run: 64k
Weight: 157

Once or twice this week I had to remind myself that I'm still recovering from being sick. (I can still feel residual crap in the bottom of my lungs) So overall it was pretty good week.
Stuff to think about this week: run 6 times, fix wheel and contact HED in regards to race wheels. I've been putting that last one off, but I promise, promise, promise to do it this week. Oh yea, must finish off taxes too. Oh joy.

The funk is out! The funk is out! Monday weigh in.

I think the last of this @#%%%^! bug is over with. Three weeks to the day.. zoinks. After my 1.5 hr 'nap' on Fri, I crashed early and got 9.5 hrs of sleep. This put me in good shape for Saturday and I ground out 3:20 on the computrainer. I had 3 hrs on tap, but since I'm in Colorado, I have some good climbs to contend with and I never stop halfway up a climb, so the total time for Saturday spin session was 3:20. I asked myself, 'is the funk out?' I say to myself, 'I think so.'
So I crash on Saturday night and get 10 hours of zzz's. Yea baby! Next on tap, a 2 hour run. This will be the real test, as long runs always leave me feeling a little beat up. The good news is I got er done and it actually felt ok! Woo hoo... the funk is OUT! I'm so frikin happy to be healthy again. :))

So, here's the numbers for last week:
swim: 7k
bike: 4hrs 30min
run: 52k

Training wise, it's been a brutal last 4 weeks. Easy week, followed by a week of crappy-sickness, followed by 2 weeks of slowly-getting-progressively-better-sickness. Not exactly going according to plan, but now that that is all behind me, what now? The one thing I must resist to do is try to 'catch up' on lost training. Oh yea I'll be starting to crank out some good mileage, but I'm not going to jump into right away - so the next 10 days will just be a build period and by May I'll be going full bore.

Sally always asks me 'what do you think about on your long ride/runs?' To which she gets the standard male response ' I dunno.' What do I think about? I had some great topics I was going to bring up on my blog, I mean some good, serious, deep stuff - but that was 24 hours ago and can I remember it now? No. I think I just enter a quasi dreamlike state and just think about stuff. I really should carry a voice recorder so I don't forget all this stuff.

C'est tout for now. Cheers!

Get the funk out!

I can tell I'm slowly coming out of my 'funk'. Still not 100%, but improving, and that's what is important. The workouts since I've been sick have been rather uninspired, physically I'm probably around 80-85%, mentally, I'm still in a bit of a rut, but it will come around. As an example today, I had a 4k swim planned and physically I felt quite strong in the water but I was feeling tired mentally and doing a workout when you are not 100% into it is rather taxing. I did get the job done, went home, ate and promptly fell asleep - for an hour and half! Needless to say, my 2nd workout, which was to be a short run, promptly got tossed out the window. I hoping by the start of next week I'll be back to 'normal'.

Tomorrow I'm going to grind out 3 hrs on the trainer and Sunday I'll see if I can run for 2 hours. Hopefully all goes well. Have a great weekend!

Monday weigh in..

I wish I stuff to report, but I don't. I'm still not 100% and am now starting to get a little worried. I know I'm on the mend as I'm sleeping much better, but I'm still have congestion issues, especially at night. Damn, I've been fighting this bug for 15 days now and it appears it's going to be hanging on for a few more yet. I can hear you now: "why don't you go to the doctor??" Ok, got me, I'm guilty. But seriously, what's a doctor going to say? 'Rest, eat well and here take some drugs.' So, I'm batting 2 out 3 - that's not too bad. Joking aside, if I can't clear the last of this bug up in the next few days, I will go - promise.

I did keep last week's promise of only working out for an hour a day, for Monday to Friday. As a result, last week's totals are messed up. Here's the low down:
swim: 7.6k
spin: 4hrs
run: 12k
No, that run total is not a misprint. My whole schedule is messed up due to this damn bug and I've had to take multiple days off during the week to get the extra rest. The long run got moved up a day (which made it today- hence it's not in last week's total - oh and by the way, it was crappy - had 2 hours on the schedule, felt terrible so cut it down to 1.5 hrs).

So that's basically the situation, it looks like this week is going to be yet another easy week and hopefully I can shake the last of this illness. Hopefully the workouts that I do are enough to maintain fitness because I'm sure the heck not gaining any. Gotta run... err make that sleep. Cheers.

Another brick in the wall, monthy totals.

So my big bike turned out to be a big bust. Hey it happens. Not much I can do except re-examine the coming month, tweak the plan and soldier on. The good news is that I'm slowly winning the battle over the bug that sidelined me. Last week I ended up putting all my efforts into 'getting well.' I like to do that, focus on one thing and do it the best I can, then move on. So how did I focus on getting well? Pretty simple, try to think good thoughts (this can be tough, being sick just makes me feel sorry for myself), eat super-well and get lots of rest. Positive thoughts and meditation looks after my mind and soul, eating well and getting lots of rest looks after my body... 100% health is sure to follow!

Naturally I asked myself if I was over training. It can be hard to be objective about oneself, but after looking at the symptoms and the data I decided that I wasn't. Here is why: I wasn't displaying the usual symptoms of overtraining ie: chronic inflamation, messed up sleep patterns, phsyical injury, GI distress, high resting HR or sugar cravings. Actually this months totals were LESS than last March's totals, so I truely don't believe I was shelling myself. For now, getting sick twice in 8 weeks I'm going to chalk up to 'one of those things.'

I imagine my immune system is like a wall, after it's been compromised I must rebuild it. How? 1) estabish and stick to a regular sleep pattern. Super important for the coming 4 months. 2) I need 8 to 8.5 hour every night. 3) Be hyper aware of the diet. Fruits, veggies, quality protein, whole grains and healthy carbs - my junk food allowances are: pretzels on occasion and a daily handful of chocolate chips.
(and yes the title of the post is a Pink Floyd reference:)

March totals:
Swim:27.3k
Spin: 31:30hrs
Run: 160.5k
I give my current swim fitness a 'B'. Bike fitness a B- and run fitness a C. The goal for April: maintain swim fitness, bring bike fitness to a 'B' and run fitness to a B-.
How?
This week for Monday to Friday, I PROMISE not to work out more than 1 hour a day. I must finish building up my 'immune system wall'. The following weeks will be cycle/run focused, but I'll still be swimming at least twice a week, getting 7+k in. I wanted to start a running 'tempo cycle' and get a weekly tempo run in for the next 6 weeks - that plan is currently on hold.

Lastly, I updated the race schedule, it's on the left. There are a couple of more I've got my eye on, but the important ones are up. Somehow I think this year is going to be dedicated to "building the base"... That's all for now,
Cheers!