Well...my training finally took a hit due to the winter weather. With 15" of snowfall overnight, and wind chills in the -20s, I officially had zero motivation. Here is the breakdown of week 6 and week 7:
Week 6
Swim: 6600 yards
Bike: 29 miles
Run: 18.2 miles
Best of the best: Wednesday's swim workout. The workout immediately followed a bike workout (27min threshold ride). Main set was 12x100 @ 10" rest. After a couple of these 100s, I made up my mind instead to hold a constant interval of 1:20. At the beginning of the workout I was holding 1:08-1:10s (probably the first 8 or so) and then the 9th and 10th repeat were around 1:12, then I had a 1:13, and finally a 1:16. This was a good indicator that I am gaining some swimming endurance/speed and makes me pretty excited. I can't stand swimming slow and losing my swimming shape, so being able to do 12x100 @ 1:20 is uplifting.
Honorable mention best of the best: I braved the 5 degree weather and went for my long run outside on Sunday. I ran from my apartment to Ames City Hall and back. The total was about 8.75 miles and the total time was an hour 15min. It was nice to be able to run this long outside, however the cold was pretty terrible. I finished with frost covering all of my body from head to toe. It actually looked pretty cool!
Worst of the worst: My bike mileage was pretty down this week. I missed out on my long ride on Saturday due to a YMCA swim meet in Des Moines. I told myself I would ride after the meet, but I could only make myself ride for 45minutes instead of an hour and 45min.
Week 7
Two words can describe this week: No Motivation. Throughout week 7 the winter weather conditions were harsh. 20" of snowfall. The high temperatures of the week in the single digits. All of this, coupled with a lot of schoolwork led to no motivation to complete my allotted amount of workout time for the week. Here are the totals:
Swim: 4000 yards
Bike: 39 miles
Run: 12 miles
My total time for the week was only 50% of what it was supposed to be. This was not a good week at all.
Best of the best: The ISU Triclones held our annual time trials on Saturday and Sunday of the week. These time trials are to determine the top 7 male and female athletes that will be our team for nationals in April. Saturday we had the 10k run time trial. This went better than expected as I have not been running what I should be, and not been running hard intervals hardly at all to increase my speed. My time for the run was 40:19. It was a two loop run and the group I was in ran negative splits (20:20, 19:59) for each 5k. My calves definitely have been in pain for the 4 days after that run though...
Honorable mention: At the YMCA swim meet in Boone on Saturday I told the kids I would swim a 500 butterfly if one of our 7year old girls finished her first ever 200free with all flipturns. She did it, so in turn, I had to do my 500fly. It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Finished it in 7minutes exactly, so I was decently pleased.
Worst of the worst: The overall trend of the week was the worst. Only getting in 50% of my total workout time is unacceptable. I have blamed it all on the weather, but in reality, the weather can't be completely to blame. Week 8 will be a lot better.
Thats all for now! I'll leave you with the forecast high temperatures for week 9: (something to look forward to..)
Monday: 37
Tuesday: 42
Wednesday: 51
Thursday: 53
Friday: 46
(these temperatures may not seem extremely warm...but coming off a week of single digit high temperatures, it's a HEAT WAVE!)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
More Winter Training..
It has been a long time since I have posted because I have been busy with new classes starting, getting settled in to training with a new schedule, and triathlon club stuff. But anyway, today is the final day of Week 5. That means that I am 35 days into my 252 day training program. Here is a brief overview of the last couple of weeks of training:
Week 2:
6750 swim yards
34 bike miles
9.3 run miles
Week 3:
2600 swim yards
78 bike miles
14.3 run miles
(the low swim yards was due to the pool being 90+ degrees and not wanting to die of heat exhaustion...)
Week 4:
8100 swim yards
72 bike miles
21.8 run miles
And now we're caught up to week 5 which just ended 4 days ago. Week 5 definitely had its ups and downs. The total time I was supposed to train for the week was 10hours and 50minutes which is an hour and a half longer than the previous week. For some reason though, running never seemed to work into my schedule much due to classes and coaching and the average temperature of the week being 5 degrees. The cold weather has really got me down lately. My last outdoor workout was January 6th (exactly 3 weeks ago), and I am getting sick of running on tracks and treadmills. But it has to be done. Now on to the worst and the best of the week:
Worst workout:
The fact that I ran a total of 3.6 miles for the entire week is slightly upsetting. I know it didn't fit into my schedule and sometimes I have to let these things go but it really bugs me because my running tends to suffer the most out of the three sports, and it is where I need the most work. I had been gradually increasing the miles every week for the first 4 weeks of the Ironman Training, but this week put a damper on things. Looking ahead to week 6, there are only 2 run workouts scheduled, so that doesn't help my predicament. Luckily both of the run workouts for week 6 are quality runs (one track workout, and one long run).
Best workout:
Hands down, my best workout was Friday night. Something got into me Friday on the bus and made me want to do a killer swim workout just for the fun of it. So I came up with one and set out to finish it. First, however, I had to bike for an hour and 20minutes at Beyer with the ISU Tri Club to make up for a workout I missed earlier in the week. The bike was a good workout. I rode pretty much steady the whole time with a few 10minute intervals at about 80%. Once I got done biking, I quickly transitioned to the pool. By quickly, I mean ran through the halls and changed as fast as I could. You see, I had 1 hour and 50min to do the following workout:
3x300 (200swim, 100kick) @ 6:00
4x200 (100IM, 100free) @ 3:00
5x100 @ 1:30
5x75 @ 1:20
5x50 @ 1:10
425 backstroke/breaststroke
6x100 (50 kick no board, 50 drill) @ 1:50
12x25 kick (descend every 3) @ :40
4x300 @ 4:15
650 swim
Total yards= 6,000
The 650 swim was supposed to be 13x50, but I was running out of time so I had to swim all of the yards straight. I finished with 10seconds to spare before they shut the lights off to the pool. Total swim time was 1hr 47min 45sec, and total workout time for Friday was 3hr 8min.
So now I have finally caught up on here. Hopefully I never go this long without posting again. A friend of mine informed me yesterday that it had been exactly a month since I posted. Haha I guess that's a long time...
Overall my body has held up pretty well. By body I include my mind. It has been in the game throughout the first 5 weeks. My knees have also been holding up pretty nicely. Nothing to complain about there! Well, I guess that's all for now.
Thanks for reading!
Train hard, train safe.
Week 2:
6750 swim yards
34 bike miles
9.3 run miles
Week 3:
2600 swim yards
78 bike miles
14.3 run miles
(the low swim yards was due to the pool being 90+ degrees and not wanting to die of heat exhaustion...)
Week 4:
8100 swim yards
72 bike miles
21.8 run miles
And now we're caught up to week 5 which just ended 4 days ago. Week 5 definitely had its ups and downs. The total time I was supposed to train for the week was 10hours and 50minutes which is an hour and a half longer than the previous week. For some reason though, running never seemed to work into my schedule much due to classes and coaching and the average temperature of the week being 5 degrees. The cold weather has really got me down lately. My last outdoor workout was January 6th (exactly 3 weeks ago), and I am getting sick of running on tracks and treadmills. But it has to be done. Now on to the worst and the best of the week:
Worst workout:
The fact that I ran a total of 3.6 miles for the entire week is slightly upsetting. I know it didn't fit into my schedule and sometimes I have to let these things go but it really bugs me because my running tends to suffer the most out of the three sports, and it is where I need the most work. I had been gradually increasing the miles every week for the first 4 weeks of the Ironman Training, but this week put a damper on things. Looking ahead to week 6, there are only 2 run workouts scheduled, so that doesn't help my predicament. Luckily both of the run workouts for week 6 are quality runs (one track workout, and one long run).
Best workout:
Hands down, my best workout was Friday night. Something got into me Friday on the bus and made me want to do a killer swim workout just for the fun of it. So I came up with one and set out to finish it. First, however, I had to bike for an hour and 20minutes at Beyer with the ISU Tri Club to make up for a workout I missed earlier in the week. The bike was a good workout. I rode pretty much steady the whole time with a few 10minute intervals at about 80%. Once I got done biking, I quickly transitioned to the pool. By quickly, I mean ran through the halls and changed as fast as I could. You see, I had 1 hour and 50min to do the following workout:
3x300 (200swim, 100kick) @ 6:00
4x200 (100IM, 100free) @ 3:00
5x100 @ 1:30
5x75 @ 1:20
5x50 @ 1:10
425 backstroke/breaststroke
6x100 (50 kick no board, 50 drill) @ 1:50
12x25 kick (descend every 3) @ :40
4x300 @ 4:15
650 swim
Total yards= 6,000
The 650 swim was supposed to be 13x50, but I was running out of time so I had to swim all of the yards straight. I finished with 10seconds to spare before they shut the lights off to the pool. Total swim time was 1hr 47min 45sec, and total workout time for Friday was 3hr 8min.
So now I have finally caught up on here. Hopefully I never go this long without posting again. A friend of mine informed me yesterday that it had been exactly a month since I posted. Haha I guess that's a long time...
Overall my body has held up pretty well. By body I include my mind. It has been in the game throughout the first 5 weeks. My knees have also been holding up pretty nicely. Nothing to complain about there! Well, I guess that's all for now.
Thanks for reading!
Train hard, train safe.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
One week down...
Well the first week was a success. Definitely ramped up the mileage from my previous weeks as this was my biggest workout week since the week of August 16th. Here are some totals:
Swim: 6850 yards
Bike: 68.4 miles
Run: 15.7 miles
Total workout time: 7 hours 45 minutes
The weather was a little iffy this week with Muscatine getting quite a bit of snow over a 12-24 hour period:
My favorite workout this week was a tie between my swim on Wednesday and my run on Sunday. The Wednesday swim had a main set that consisted of 2x600 yards. I went into the set slightly irked that it was kind of a boring workout, but once I got going it felt really good. I focused primarily on maintaining my stroke count per length at 12. This forces me to stretch out a little longer each stroke and make each stroke really count. The past few months my swim stroke has been lackadaisical and usually been about 15 strokes per length so this workout was really good for me and my stroke. I soon hope to get the strokes per length down to 11. The 600's weren't particularly fast, but they felt long and strong and I held consistent laps at right around :40 per 50 yards. The Sunday run was my biggest achievement of the week. I have been struggling with my knees all year so the running has been minimal, if at all. The plan was to run outside with my new Yak Trax i got for Christmas, but the weather didn't cooperate as the temperature barely saw 20 degrees. I decided to grind out the run on the treadmill at the Y. When I started running, my 10 (almost 11!) year old friend Miles Utley came up and started running on the treadmill next to me. I didn't figure it would last very long as he is barely 4 feet tall and his feet have trouble keeping up with the treadmill. As I kept running, Miles kept running. He would take breaks approximately every 5 min to stretch or get a drink of water, but he ended up being on the treadmill for all 55 minutes of my workout. This 10 year old ran a total of 3.83 mil;es and for a total of 46 minutes! I was very impressed and extremely glad to have the company as it made the run fly by.
The hardest workout of the week was the Tuesday bike ride. I hadn't been on my bike in almost 2 months. I rode the rollers as it was the only training device available. The rollers make it difficult to adjust on your seat and when you stand you have to slow way down, so my butt started to get pretty sore. It felt ok leg-wise, but the butt was an issue.
God truly blessed me with a great family and friends for support through this journey. He has kept me strong both physically and mentally through 1 week, and I pray he continues to do so for many weeks to come. So 1 week down, 35 weeks to go!
Thanks for reading!
Swim: 6850 yards
Bike: 68.4 miles
Run: 15.7 miles
Total workout time: 7 hours 45 minutes
The weather was a little iffy this week with Muscatine getting quite a bit of snow over a 12-24 hour period:
My favorite workout this week was a tie between my swim on Wednesday and my run on Sunday. The Wednesday swim had a main set that consisted of 2x600 yards. I went into the set slightly irked that it was kind of a boring workout, but once I got going it felt really good. I focused primarily on maintaining my stroke count per length at 12. This forces me to stretch out a little longer each stroke and make each stroke really count. The past few months my swim stroke has been lackadaisical and usually been about 15 strokes per length so this workout was really good for me and my stroke. I soon hope to get the strokes per length down to 11. The 600's weren't particularly fast, but they felt long and strong and I held consistent laps at right around :40 per 50 yards. The Sunday run was my biggest achievement of the week. I have been struggling with my knees all year so the running has been minimal, if at all. The plan was to run outside with my new Yak Trax i got for Christmas, but the weather didn't cooperate as the temperature barely saw 20 degrees. I decided to grind out the run on the treadmill at the Y. When I started running, my 10 (almost 11!) year old friend Miles Utley came up and started running on the treadmill next to me. I didn't figure it would last very long as he is barely 4 feet tall and his feet have trouble keeping up with the treadmill. As I kept running, Miles kept running. He would take breaks approximately every 5 min to stretch or get a drink of water, but he ended up being on the treadmill for all 55 minutes of my workout. This 10 year old ran a total of 3.83 mil;es and for a total of 46 minutes! I was very impressed and extremely glad to have the company as it made the run fly by.
The hardest workout of the week was the Tuesday bike ride. I hadn't been on my bike in almost 2 months. I rode the rollers as it was the only training device available. The rollers make it difficult to adjust on your seat and when you stand you have to slow way down, so my butt started to get pretty sore. It felt ok leg-wise, but the butt was an issue.
God truly blessed me with a great family and friends for support through this journey. He has kept me strong both physically and mentally through 1 week, and I pray he continues to do so for many weeks to come. So 1 week down, 35 weeks to go!
Thanks for reading!
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Adventure Begins...
So it is officially December 20th and that means the training plan starts TODAY! This weeks training plan looks like this:
Monday
Swim: 1800yds
Tuesday
Bike: 50min
Run: 35min
Wednesday
Swim: 2400yds
Bike: 45min
Thursday
Swim: 2450yds
Run: 45min
Friday (optional)
Swim: 1600yds
Saturday
Bike: 80min
Sunday
Run: 55min
Bike: 30min
Totals: Swim = 8250yds
Bike = 205min
Run = 135min
I have definitely been taking it easy for the past 2 months. In the past couple of weeks I have been swamped with school work leading up to finals week last week so I have literally done almost nothing. This should be an interesting experience and I am looking forward to it immensely. If I were to ask for people to pray about two things it would be for my patience and willingness to follow this program and also for continuing knee strength while I increase my mileage for the next 36 weeks.
Thanks for reading!
Monday
Swim: 1800yds
Tuesday
Bike: 50min
Run: 35min
Wednesday
Swim: 2400yds
Bike: 45min
Thursday
Swim: 2450yds
Run: 45min
Friday (optional)
Swim: 1600yds
Saturday
Bike: 80min
Sunday
Run: 55min
Bike: 30min
Totals: Swim = 8250yds
Bike = 205min
Run = 135min
I have definitely been taking it easy for the past 2 months. In the past couple of weeks I have been swamped with school work leading up to finals week last week so I have literally done almost nothing. This should be an interesting experience and I am looking forward to it immensely. If I were to ask for people to pray about two things it would be for my patience and willingness to follow this program and also for continuing knee strength while I increase my mileage for the next 36 weeks.
Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Headaches = Cured
I finally figured out the cause of my headaches. I couldn't figure out anything that made them go away. I tried everything I could think of. So finally, I went to the Vision Center. They figured out that I am slightly far-sighted meaning when things are close up they come in a little blurry and my eyes are straining to make them less fuzzy. I didn't realize it because it is so slight but they assured me glasses would make the headaches go away.
That being said, I am ready to slowly ramp up my training again in preparation for the 36 week Ironman Louisville Training Program provided by TriDaddy. It starts on December 21st and runs through the race on August 28th, 2011.
I have started coaching the Boone County YMCA swim team. This is taking up some of my time. I am actually swimming on the team as well since they increased the age group to 21 years old. I have my first swim meet this weekend at West Des Moines Valley High School. Its going to be an exciting season as I haven't swam very competitively since I was in high school. I will be swimming the 50fly, 100fly, and 200IM this weekend as well as the 200 medley relay.
I will slowly start increasing my mileage in all three aspects of the sport so that my knee can ease back into the routine. No sense blowing it now since I have been saving it for a couple of months now.
Thanks for reading!
That being said, I am ready to slowly ramp up my training again in preparation for the 36 week Ironman Louisville Training Program provided by TriDaddy. It starts on December 21st and runs through the race on August 28th, 2011.
I have started coaching the Boone County YMCA swim team. This is taking up some of my time. I am actually swimming on the team as well since they increased the age group to 21 years old. I have my first swim meet this weekend at West Des Moines Valley High School. Its going to be an exciting season as I haven't swam very competitively since I was in high school. I will be swimming the 50fly, 100fly, and 200IM this weekend as well as the 200 medley relay.
I will slowly start increasing my mileage in all three aspects of the sport so that my knee can ease back into the routine. No sense blowing it now since I have been saving it for a couple of months now.
Thanks for reading!
Thursday, November 4, 2010
What a Headache...
This past week, I have been plagued by an ongoing headache that simply will not be defeated. I have tried everything from aspirin, to water, caffeine, food, sleep, and anything else anyone could think of. Just when I think it's gone, it comes back full force. This being said, I haven't been able to drag myself to go to practices with a throbbing head. This makes me feel terrible after having a pretty good week working out last week.
Hopefully it gets better soon so I can get back to ramping up my workouts!
Thanks for reading!
Hopefully it gets better soon so I can get back to ramping up my workouts!
Thanks for reading!
Sunday, October 31, 2010
First Week Back!
So this week was my first big week back to training. I didn't do any running because I'm still trying to nurse my knee a little. But I did get in 3 bike workouts and 3 swim workouts to go along with another easy mountain bike ride. I did the Triclone swim and bike practices this week. Swimming on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday and biking on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The easy bike ride was to the ISU football game on Saturday afternoon with Chelsey. The Cyclones won their homecoming game against Kansas 28-16. Only one more game til bowl eligible! GO STATE!
Here are my workouts for this week:
Monday: - Bike Practice - Spinervals "Bending Crankarms" (1 hour)
This workout consists of intervals in the hardest gear at low RPMs and some off-the-bike squats to build strength. Basically it is a real leg burner that'll have you thinking twice about taking the stairs for a couple of days.
Tuesday: - Swim Practice -
Warmup: 300 swim, 200 pull, 200 kick
8x25 underwater kicking w/ 45" rest
6x50 drill @ 1'
Main Set: 7x100 @ 1:45
5x100 @ 1:35
3x100 @ 1:25
Cooldown: 200 easy
Wednesday: - Bike Practice - Spinervals "Suff-o-rama" (55 min)
This workout isn't quite as much of a muscle killer as "Bending Crankarms", but it has a lot more high-intensity intervals and some all-out, 100% effort intervals that come one after another to really make you have to work hard.
Thursday: - Swim practice -
Warmup: 300 swim, 200 pull, 200 kick
8x50 drill @ 1'
Main set: 2x200 @ 3:40
2x400 @ 7:20
1x600 finish under 9:30
Cooldown: 100 easy
Friday: - Bike Practice - "All Request Friday" - (1 hour)
We listened to some music and I made up a workout to the songs including some fast super-spins and some ab exercises.
Saturday: - Easy Bike to the football game with Chelsey
Sunday: - Swim practice -
Warmup: 300 swim, 200 pull, 200 kick
6x50 drill @ 1'
Main set: 4x500 descending @ 7:30
My times: (6:39, 6:27, 6:19, 6:17)
Cooldown: 100 easy
This was my biggest workout week since the week of the Pigman Half Triathlon in the middle of August. It felt good to have a full week of working out. special thanks to Coach Jon Saxton for a great set of workouts for the week. This was the first week he has been our official Triclones Coach and he is very eager to help our team in any way possible. If the rest of the year goes as well as this week we should be looking at some tremendous results this year.
Thanks for reading!
Here are my workouts for this week:
Monday: - Bike Practice - Spinervals "Bending Crankarms" (1 hour)
This workout consists of intervals in the hardest gear at low RPMs and some off-the-bike squats to build strength. Basically it is a real leg burner that'll have you thinking twice about taking the stairs for a couple of days.
Tuesday: - Swim Practice -
Warmup: 300 swim, 200 pull, 200 kick
8x25 underwater kicking w/ 45" rest
6x50 drill @ 1'
Main Set: 7x100 @ 1:45
5x100 @ 1:35
3x100 @ 1:25
Cooldown: 200 easy
Wednesday: - Bike Practice - Spinervals "Suff-o-rama" (55 min)
This workout isn't quite as much of a muscle killer as "Bending Crankarms", but it has a lot more high-intensity intervals and some all-out, 100% effort intervals that come one after another to really make you have to work hard.
Thursday: - Swim practice -
Warmup: 300 swim, 200 pull, 200 kick
8x50 drill @ 1'
Main set: 2x200 @ 3:40
2x400 @ 7:20
1x600 finish under 9:30
Cooldown: 100 easy
Friday: - Bike Practice - "All Request Friday" - (1 hour)
We listened to some music and I made up a workout to the songs including some fast super-spins and some ab exercises.
Saturday: - Easy Bike to the football game with Chelsey
Sunday: - Swim practice -
Warmup: 300 swim, 200 pull, 200 kick
6x50 drill @ 1'
Main set: 4x500 descending @ 7:30
My times: (6:39, 6:27, 6:19, 6:17)
Cooldown: 100 easy
This was my biggest workout week since the week of the Pigman Half Triathlon in the middle of August. It felt good to have a full week of working out. special thanks to Coach Jon Saxton for a great set of workouts for the week. This was the first week he has been our official Triclones Coach and he is very eager to help our team in any way possible. If the rest of the year goes as well as this week we should be looking at some tremendous results this year.
Thanks for reading!
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