Iowa Winters Suck

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!)

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.