Monday weigh in

Ok, let met start off by saying yesterday's long run sucked. I really don't like to post negative stuff, but I did have to get that off my chest. I've rarely been so wet or chilled as I was yesterday. I'm talking about drenching, soaked to the bone, feet squishy wet - in 5C weather. Fun stuff. The good news is I did get a 2 hour run in, the bad news is I only did 23.5k. I was wishing I had a partner to run with, there are times when solo training is tough.

Here is the recap and mileage report for week number 16:
Run: 73k
Bike: 64k
Spin: 4:15hrs
Swim 4k
Dryland: 1.5hrs
Weight: 162
This week ended up being very similar to the previous week. It caps off another 3 week build period and I'm pretty happy with my current fitness level. I was short a few k's on my projected run total, but on the other hand I got 6 good runs in each of the last two weeks. Bike and swim goals were met and weight has come down another pound.

Next week is a special week, as it marks the halfway mark to Ironman Canada, I only have 3 key workouts for the entire week, I have numerous rest days planned and I'm going to tri not to think or do anything with triathlon. Call it a system purge. The reason for this is to get fully rested and focused for the next 3 months. In May I'll re-examine my workout schedule and tweak as necessary.

Today is a scheduled rest day, I did 45 minutes of stretching, some light core work and upper body weights. I'm a big fan of stretching, hmm.. I mean proper stretching. Few people incorporate stretching in their routine and even fewer do it properly. It's a shame, personally, I've found flexibility to be very helpful in injury prevention. It increases range of motion, which in turn can aid in technique and give efficiency gains. I can't back that statement up with any scientific data - just personal experience. Besides, after a good stretch session you just plain feel good.

Lastly, due to the 'system purge', I may not post too frequently this week - do not despair! I shall be back with a vengenance and will keep everyone updated. That I promise. :) Cheers.

Weekend update

So Lance Armstrong is doing the New York City marathon. Good on him. Personally, I'm hoping this is one step towards him doing an Ironman. It would be great for him to come back to his triathlon roots and compete in Kona. For those that don't know, Kona is in Hawaii and is the site of the world Ironman Championship. In order to qualify for Kona, not only do you have to complete an Ironman, you have to qualify. Due to the increasing popularity of the sport the qualifying times are getting progressively more difficult. It sounds perverse, you put yourself through absolute hell and if you are really good at it, you get to qualify and do it again! Hmm.. perhaps I should make this a goal of mine... grin.

Here is the workout update. Yesterday was an easier day, I did a 10k easy run followed by a core workout and upper body weights. Today was 3 hours on the spinner to coach Troy's Tough Love dvd; I immediately followed that up with a short 4.5k run. The plan f0r tomorrow is a ~30k run, I hope the legs can hold out. I'm starting to close in on 80k of running for the week, which is somewhat of a milestone. The good news is that next week is a super easy week. Next weekend marks the halfway point to Ironman Canada and I plan and doing sweet F.A. Got to get fully rested up for May, June and July because they will be hard.

Pooched

My go hard days are Tuesday, Thursday and the weekend. Tuesday is hill work for running, plus a bike workout and if I'm feeling spunky I'll do some weights too. Thursday is running speed work, plus a bike workout. The weekend is pretty much dedicated to 'going long' - endurance work.
Yesterday, was an easy day. Here is what I did:
Run: 9k easy
Swim: 4000m
Ok, so swimming 4k may not be easy but it does give my legs a break. Actually, I was going to swim more, but at the 3k mark I was so hungry I only managed an extra 1k and called it quits, went home and stuffed my face. Here is the swimming set:
1000 warmup
4X600m on 9:30
500m drill work
100 cool down
Today was a hard day and yes, I'm pooched. My total run was 14k and sandwiched in the middle of that run was my tempo pace intervals. They consisted of 2k @ 3:52/km, 1k easy, 3k @ 3:55/km, 1k easy and 2k @ 3:53/km. It was a tough set. I was starting to think I may not make my goal pace of sub 4 min /kms on the last set, but I just told myself to relax and focused on cadence, lo and behold it wasn't an issue.
My 2nd workout today was a nice 64k bike ride in beautiful 24 degree weather. Naturally, I further pooched myself by doing some hill work. :)
Fortuneately, tomorrow is easy day Friday. Cheers.

The trickle down effect

I knew work was going to be rough today, so I hit the ground running and got in a few minutes early to get a jump start on the day. I still ended up working later than usual, in turn, my run was later then usual. As a result, I almost blew off my 2nd workout - note I said almost. :) Here is what I did today:

Run: total 12k. Did 7 hill repeats. Fastest 89sec, slowest 94 sec.
Bike: spin for 1:15. Planned on riding outside but time was an issue. So hopped on the trainer and actually got a really good, but short session in.
Weights: 30 minutes.

Since I was running late most of the day, my workouts ran later than usual, as a result I'm a little keyed up and I'm suppose to be in bed in 30 minutes. Hopefully I'll get tired real soon. :)

Monday weigh in

It's always good when you accomplish your goals for the week. Last week was actually week number 15, I think I mentioned earlier it was week 14, but I just double checked and it's actually 15. I can't believe 15 weeks have already past buy. I find when I really start to focus in on something, the time just flies. Ok, so here are the totals for week 15:
Run: 73.5k
Bike: 60k
Spin: 4hrs
Swim: 4.6k
Dryland: 1 hr
Weight: 163
A couple things to note: I ran 6 times last week and 73.5k is my highest mileage to date. I'm glad the body is adapting well to the running stress I'm putting on it - I plan on adding more running miles in the weeks to come. Bike and swim are good. I want to start adding some more bike mileage, but must keep reminding myself of the 'plan' - which is to still focus on running. Must keep reminding myself to stick to the plan.
As for weight, I'm a light 163. The increased running frequency is slowly changing my body composition (which I want). I'm trying to trade a couple pounds of fat for lean muscle. Seems like a fair deal, ya?

Next week, I'll be running 6 times again with expected mileage closing in on 80k. I'd like to bring saddle time up to 7hrs and maintain swimming mileage. Cheers.

Easter update

So far, it's been a great long weekend and the bonus is, on Monday, not only do I not have to work, its' also a scheduled off day. I think every weekend, should be 4 days off instead of the standard 2..
I see I haven't updated since Thursday, so here's a quick mileage report of the last few days. Friday was an easy run day of 11k. Did some strides and a couple short sprints. On Saturday I did 3 hours of 'Tough Love' with coach Troy. This is my 3rd of 6 sessions I've planned to do with that particular dvd. This one involves lots of standing/hill work and gives my legs a really good workout. After the spin session, I did a short 4.5k run.

Today was long run day and even though I had a hard spin session yesterday, the legs weren't too bad. I guess that shows they are adapting to the stresses I'm putting on them. I had 25k planned, which is a little less than usual, but I brought the mileage down a few k's for three reasons: 1) this is highest run mileage week of the season so far. 2) I have another high mileage running week ahead. 3) We have company coming over and I don't want to be too tired for the festivities. :)
Pacing for the run went as follows: first 10k @ 5:05 /km - a tad slow but I had a pee break, a pebble in my shoe, and had to adjust my mp3 player... twice! :) The next 10k is quite hilly but I was able to bring the pace down to 5:00 /km. The last 5.5k I was feeling good and the tunes were rocking so I brought the pace down again to 4:44/km.
That's all for now, see you tomorrow for Monday's weigh in. (looks promising, I think I shaved another pound. :) Cheers.

The running man

As most of you who have been following me for the last few months know, I've been running focused and plan on staying that way for another month. I've been upping my running frequency, endurance and added hill training and tempo runs, all in the hopes of becoming a 'real' runner.
This week and next week I'll be running 12 times. Somewhat of record for me, but I'm in my 14th week of training so I should be able to handle the increased load. Don't worry I haven't forgot about the other 2 sports, I just don't need to do them 6 days week. Phew.

Today was tempo run Thursday. I did a 3.5k warmup, then ran 2k hard, 1 k easy, repeated that 3 times and did an easy cooldown run home. My first 2k was at a 4:05/km pace and the next two sets were 3:55/km and 3:52/km respectively. Total run was just over 13k.
My second workout was an hour on the trainer, did some big gear work, some steady state work and some cadence work. Afterwards I spent 30 minutes doing weights.
That's it, I'm off to bed and I totally plan on sleeping in as much as my body will let me. Damn, I love long weekends!

Tic toc tic toc tic toc

Time.
I wasn't planning on getting verbose this evening. But I can feel the words are going to flow a little bit better than usual, so I might as go with it. I'm going to talk a little about time management. Yea, I know one or two of you have smirk on your face, just hear me out.
It's said that the average working Joe actually has about 8 hours of free time each and every day. The problem is that free time comes in a little chunks throughout the day, thus it's difficult to get a long stretch of free time. This makes it easy to put off stuff we know we should be doing but just don't have enough 'time'. Going for workout is a good example. Making excuses not to do something is the easy way out. Anyway, back to the topic. Where do you find time???
My trick is get as much as free time in a row as possible. Here's a typical day/example. Up at 5:30. Out the door in 15 minutes and at my desk working by 6:20. No lining up at Tim's for 10 minutes to get a coffee, no stopping to read the paper - all of these little things cut into my quality time. I eat at my desk, while working, I work through my breaks and lunch and I sure the hell don't go outside for 10 smoke breaks a day. I snack on the go and eat in the car on the way home. Within 15 minutes of arriving home, I'm out the door and doing my run workout. Yea it can be tough - but that's just mental, just suck it up and get it done.
Bam! Workout number 1 already done. Next I eat, do some chores, grab snack and get ready for workout number 2. If I'm lucky, I can grab a 20 minute nap. Do workout number 2, get dinner ready, get all my stuff ready for the next day. Food, coffee, uniform laid out, showered etc. If all goes well, I have an hour to chill with Sally or fart around on the computer. Then it's off to bed.
The point is. YOU have the time - just stop wasting it. No excuses and nothing is impossible.

Ok, let me climb down from the soapbox and tell you what I did today. Yesterday was a bit of leg frier, so today was an 8k easy run and a pretty hard 4600m swim session. Here's the swim details:
1000m warmup
6X400m on 6:15
5X200m on 3:15
cooldown
Other then my arms getting a little tired, I have no complaints and I'm pretty happy with the day's workout. Cheers!

Inaugural ride

Well it would appear that switching shoes did the trick. I did hill repeats in my new Saucony's and my ankle seemed just fine. It was perfect weather and I really wanted to stoke the engine and just run. However, the plan was hill repeats, and I have to stick with the plan. End result was 11.5k with 6 hill repeats - it felt great.

Yes I did it. I finally got my new bike on the road. I figure it's 20 degrees out, there is hardly any dirt and salt the road, there is NO excuse to not ride on a day like this. So I took my bike on a 60k jaunt around Caledon. It was sweet, it was fast and it was fun. Could you ask for anything more? At one point I hit 70km/h, I think with the right hill I could get that sucker well into the 90's. Muahahaha. Not a bad inaugural ride.

Monday weigh in

Today is my designated rest day, so instead of working out, I spent a couple of hours tweakin my bike. It's amazing how fast a couple of hours can fly by, a tweak there, an adjustment here, swap a tire, test stuff out, check emergency kit...

Last week was a fairly easy week, I ran myself down pretty hard during the previous week's training camp, so I needed the rest/recovery time. Here's the stats:
Run: 49.5km
Spin: 5 hrs
Swim: 0 (!)
Dryland: 2 hours
Weight: 163
I guess the only thing of note is the lack of a swim last week. Really, it's no big deal though, swimming is the easiest sport for me, it's the other two sports I have to concentrate on.

The next two weeks are scheduled to be running focused. This may be subject to change, depending if I get that ankle pain I mentioned yesterday. I should know tomorrow if new shoes will solve the problem as I'm scheduled for a hill workout. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. So here is the tentative plan: run: 70km, bike 7hrs, swim 5k.

A taxing issue

Hey guys, just a quick weekend update because I'm actually putting off doing my taxes at the moment.
In case you're wondering, Friday ended up being a write off - it happens, not very often, but it does happen. Naturally, being well rested, Saturday's spin session was wicked. I did the same session as last week and my legs felt much better this time around. They are defineately getting stronger. Afterwards, I did some stretching, some core work and an upper body weight workout.

Today, was long run day. I felt awesome and was going to crack off a great run, except at the 17k mark I got a niggling little pain in my right ankle. It did go away after a few kms, but I'm not happy that I had it in the first place. Going to change shoes and keep an eye on it. I did manage to negative split the last 10k and the overall distance clocked in at 29k.

Ok that's it on the workout front. In other news, I'm thinking of putting togethor a Saturday morning long bike crew. Something fairly harcore and geared towards people training for Ironman. So, if there are any other tri wienies out there, drop me a line, the email is on the left. I'll compile a list and send out more information if I get a decent response.
Ok ok ok.. back to doing taxes. Sigh...

Rem cycle

Ever have one of those nights? I love and need my zzzz's, especially when training. So I hunkered down for a solid 8.5 hours of sleep last night - yes, I go to bed at 9. Sally woke me at 5:30 and I swear I was in the middle of a rem sleep cycle. Oh joy, waking up tired and sleepy. I wanted to call in sick for work, oh sure could you imagine that? "Hi, ya I won't be coming in today because I'm in the middle of rem sleep cycle." Somehow, I doubt they'd be understanding.

I did have a small after work run scheduled, but I blew that off - this is a moderate mileage week, so I can do that without feeling guilty. (ok, I still do) Instead, I went for nap. Usually a 20-30 minute nap sets me up real fine. Not today. I'm still sleepy. See? That's what you get when you wake up in the middle of a rem cycle.

Here is the workout update. Yesterday, run 7.5k, spin for an hour and 30 minutes of weights. Tonight I have a pool workout planned, but I'm soooo very tempted to pop a bowl of popcorn and watch a movie instead. I'll let you know what happens. :) As for this weekend, I'll be doing a 3 hours spin session to coach Troy's Tough Love volume 13. This did a good job frying my legs last weekend, so in a sick way I'm kinda looking forward to it. I'll follow that spin session with a short run. On Sunday, I'll be running ~27k.
Have a great weekend!

The 'wave'

Still pretty much in recovery mode from last week's training camp. Yesterday, I did 2 hours of aerobic work on the trainer and a 30 minute weight session. Today was a steady 13k run. It took some mental effort to get it done, but as usual, once you get going - it's not so bad. Hopefully, another day or two of easy workouts and I'll be back to 100%. The next 2 weeks will be, once again, running focused, so I need to be fully recovered.

What is 'the wave'? The wave occurs when I'm running against traffic and a courteous oncoming car moves over and gives the runner (me) lots of space. Usually, if there is no oncoming traffic for the vehicle, they will cross over the centre of the road and give me lots of space. This is a nice gesture, it tells me they see me and that I don't have to worry about them.

So who gets the wave from me? Basically, anyone courteous enough to move a few feet over and give me a little extra space. I wave at them to acknowledge their coolness, they wave back saying 'hey, no problem'. I actually, consider myself fairly fortunate. Country roads have far fewer cars and at least 75% of the vehicles that pass me, earn a wave.
I have to admit it boggles my mind when someone doesn't move over, especially if there is no oncoming traffic. I have hard time understanding that type of mentality. Obviously, they don't get a wave. No wave for you!

So, if you are in my neck of the woods and you see a runner waving at you, it might be me thanking you for your courtesy.
/wave

Monday weigh in

Phew. Training camp is done. Lots of quality workout time last week and back to work today = one tired puppy. Today is a rest day, I'm taking full advantage of it. Instead of working out, I watched Shawshank Redemption. An excellent movie. Here's the mileage report for last week:
Run: 72 km
Spin 10 hrs
Swim 7.8 km
Dryland: 1.5 hrs
Weight: 163
What can I say. I accomplished what I set out to do. I wanted a tough week, I got a tough week. Mission accomplished. The only other thing of note was that I dropped a pound. One less pound to cart around is always a good thing.

This week will be a moderate week. I have to see how well the body bounces back from training camp before I start beating myself up again. The *tentative* mileage plan for the week is: run:50k, spin: 6 hrs and swim 5k.
Cheers.

Careful what you wish for

Training camp is done!
I would slide the last 6 days into the 'difficult' side of things. I had to carefully guage each day and make each workout just hard enough so that I could get through the week without blowing up. Well I didn't blow up, but today's long run was tough. So in the end I calculated well, got what I wished for and made it through the week.
Here's is the quick version of the last two days. Saturday, was a 3 hour spin session. I "rewarded" myself by spinning to a new dvd, Spinervals 13.0 Tough Love. Yikes, this was a leg frier. Lots of standing and hill work, this chewed up my quads rather nicely. (mental note - I want to do that dvd at least 6 times). Afterwards, I did a short 4.5k run and I just knew that Sunday's long run was going to be epic.
Fast forward to today. Damn, what a gorgeous day, perfect for a long run. I wonder how well the legs will hold up, they took a beating this week. Oh well, it's my last work out of training camp - let's get er done. My pace was slow, but I wasn't worried about that, today was about just slogging through some tough miles. I'll tell you a secret. I actually walked the tougher hills. I had scheduled 30k and wussed out at just over 27k. I was starting to hit that "grey area" of doing too much. So instead of tacking on the last little mini 3k loop back to the house, I just headed straight for home. Yay, now it's recovery time!

Side note about recovery. I was reading this brief science article about laughter. Basically, just thinking about laughing is good for you. We've all heard of the therapeutic value of laughter. What struck me in this article is that the participants had higher level of HGH (human growth hormone) when just thinking about laughing. So how does this relate to recovery? Well, HGH is a huge factor for athletes and greatly aids in recovery and is primarily released during sleep. Faster recovery = better quality workouts. So, by putting two and two togethor, I figure laughing may make me a better athlete. I'm sure someone, somewhere will find that funny.

Monthly mileage report, 5k time trial &training camp

Lots of stuff to catch up on. Here's the news in chronological order. Yesterday, 2 spin sessions of 2 hours each - done. Had to catch up on my bike trainer time and give the running legs a break. So 4 hours on the bike yesterday.

Today, my a.m. session was a 13k run. It went like this: warmup 5k, hard 5k, 3k easy. I like to a hard 5k once a month to guage fitness, it's a 90%+ effort and I use it that as an indicator of my current running speed. The good news is that all my focus on running is slowly but surely paying off. Today, I came in at 19:54, which I'm very happy with considering my best time all last year was 20:00 AND I'm in the middle of training camp. I would have been happy with a 21:00 and I broke 20 minutes. This bodes well... and it's only March!

I met two other IronPeople today. One woman who was at the local bike store - will be doing her seventh Ironman this year. Awesome. The other was a guy I met during my p.m. swim session who is heading down to Lake Placid for his second. Very cool indeed. It's always nice to meet people who think what we do is 'normal'.
As I mentioned, my p.m. session was at the pool, which was a moderate effort with a total of 2800 meters. The workout was as follows:
1000 warmup
10X100 on 1:45. First 25m butterfly, next 75m freestyle.
2X400 pull.

This finished up March and my totals for the month are:
Run: 244.5 km
Spin: 30:45 hrs
Swim: 27.7 km
Dryland: 10 hrs
A great month. I'm very happy with where my current fitness level is and this year is shaping up just fine thank you very much. :) I can't wait to race.

Lastly, I have 2 more days of training camp. On tap for tomorrow is 3 hour spin followed by a short run and then a 30k run Sunday. Yay!

Get shorty

Had a restless sleep last night. Occasionally this happens and it seems to correlate with large amounts of aerobic training. It's like the metabolism gets cranked up for repairs and the result is a tossy turney night. Not sure if this signifies anything of importance, but I'm going to do some research into it.

Today's a.m. consisted of a 17k run. It's really enjoyable to be in shorts in March and running in the morning sun. It's good for the soul. This is my mid week longish run and I could feel my legs as they were still tired from yesterday's hill work. However, I was able to maintain a good steady easy pace for the duration.
Afterwards, I ate 2nd breakfast, did some chores around the house, grabbed a nap, ate 1st lunch, had a snack and got ready for my p.m. session. The p.m. session was a long swim of 4900m and the majority of it felt pretty good. Here's the breakdown:
warmup 1000m
6X400 on 6:15. Each one came in at 5:45 to 5:50
5X 200 on 3:15. Each one was about 2:45.
4X 100 on 1:45. Each one came in on 1:20.
100 warm down.
Overall, a great day and all goals were met. Cheers.

Training camp is well underway

Wow, did I score a good week of vacation. The weather is awesome. Actually did my run in shorts today, yea spring fever, bring it on!

For the rest of the week, each day, I'm doing two seperate workouts. One in the a.m. and one in the p.m. So for today I did a 2 hour aerobic workout on the bike as my a.m. workout. My p.m. workout was a 10.5k run in which I hit the hills. I did 5 hill repeats, each one coming in between 90-92 seconds. It's a long, tough journey in becoming a runner, but I know I'm making progress. I wasn't able to consistently hold 90 second hill climbs last year - so I'm improving. I just wish running improvement wasn't so slow! I'm secretly jealous of natural runners, I realize that I'm going to have fight for every little improvement in my run times. The good news is I've only been doing this serious for 3 years, so after 5 or 6 years I might actually be fast. Mind you, I'll be over the hill then, so it will probably be a wash. :) Seriously, if Ed Whitlock can run sub 3 hour marathons at age 72, I know I'll be coax some extra speed out these legs for some time to come. Ya see? Inspiration is everywhere.

After my run workout I did my Tuesday weight routine. So all goals for the day are met and my legs are tired, but not too tired, which again is part of the plan. I know they will be plenty tired by Sunday. Cheers!

Monday weigh in

As of yesterday, I have 5 months until Ironman Canada, it also marked the official end to base training. Being as it was the last day of a recovery week, I celebrated by doin a short long run of 18.5k. The first half I did at my regular pace of 5:00/km and for the second half I went progessively faster, coming in at 4:36/km.
Here are the stats for week number 12:
Run: 36km
Spin: 4 hrs
Swim 7,500m
Dryland: 1:30
Weight: 164
Recovery week did what it was exactly meant to do, leave me well rested and ready to tackle training camp, which officially begins today. The beautiful thing is Monday is a designated rest day, so I'll be starting training camp nice and slow. The only thing I'm doing today is an easy 1 hour spin followed by a 45 minute stretch/core session. Tomorrow is when the real fun starts.

A 3 hour tour..

Just doing a little procrastinating before my 3 hour spin session this morning.. Here is the news in order of importance:
1) I'm on vacation. :)
2) Training camp begins
3) My easy week worked. I'm recovered.
Before I expand on the news, I'll tell you what I did yesterday. Friday, I kept my promise and stayed off my legs. I did 3000m at the pool, which involved some I.M. work. (meaning I was swimming all 4 strokes: butterfly, back, breast and free). That was fun as it was nice to mix things up a little bit.

Yes, I'm on vacation and yes I'll be training hard for the week. "You are taking a week off work to train?" Yes, I am. Ok now that we got that out of the way, here is the plan:
Training camp officially begins Monday, which although it is a 'rest day', I will be doing 1 hour of light spinning followed by a good stretch session and core work. This will set me up for the rest of the week. Here are the goals:
Run: ~ 75k
Spin: 10 hrs
Swim: 7500 m
A considerable spike in mileage, but defineatly doable. I may have to follow up training camp with back to back rest days. :)

Back to the present, in a few minutes I'm going to hop on my trainer for 3 hours and watch Return of the King. Sunday, I have a ~17k run planned. Sunday marks the official end of base training. A milestone of sorts. The next 12 week block will feature more hill work and tempo runs.
Ok enough procrastinating, I'm going on a 3 hour tour ... a 3 hour tour.. (everyone sing along).