Less than 2 weeks until the Martian Marathon which means I am on my taper.  And I am going crazy.  I have a love/hate relationship with tapering.  I love it because it is something to look forward to after weeks of logging long miles.  It finally gives the body a chance to rest.  At the same time, I hate it because my body (and mind) is used to logging long miles and doesn’t know what to do with itself.

Yesterday, I had a taper injury panic.  You know what I am talking about.  That pain that you never noticed before and is probably just sore muscles, but because it is so close to race day, you fear the worst.  I had an easy bike ride and was getting a weird pain in my knee.  Thankfully though, it hasn’t bothered me since and I have done a 5 mile run since.

The taper injury panic yesterday was followed by the taper lack of preparedness panic today.  I just had to do an easy 5 miles.  I felt miserable the entire way.  I was sluggish, tired, and sore.  My arms hurt, my lungs hurt, my legs didn’t want to go and it felt like I was lugging a bag of cement.  Mentally it was a frustrating run.  After all my training and 5 miles is kicking my butt?? What the heck??  How am I going to do 26.2??  My confidence was boosted when I got home and looked at my watch to see that I had averaged 7:50 miles – probably faster than I should have been going.

Anyways, I just need to stay positive for the next 10 days.  I know I have trained adequately.  I know that my body will hold up.  I just need to remember it.

March Totals

I am super happy with my numbers for month.  Compared to last March, I had over 100 more miles and over 12 hours more time spent training.  I just have to remember this as I taper so that I don’t get down on myself.

I leave you with song lyrics that keeps me going on my hard workouts.  I first heard this at the beginning of the Steelhead half iron last year and it gets stuck in my head all the time:

This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name!

-Fort Minor “Remember the Name”

March 1st.  The start of a new month.  The weather is warming up and we spring forward an hour in just a few weeks, which means that Spring should be right around the corner.  The 5 day forecast here actually looks fairly pleasant with temperatures in the upper 30’s and low 40’s.  Fingers crossed that this weather keeps up for the long term.

Time to look back before we can look forward though.

Last Week

I have thoroughly enjoyed this past week.  It was a light week and I got to rest my legs a bit.  I spent some extra time on the bike and doing core workouts.  I did my first “21” workout yesterday.  I found this work on Steve In a Speedo’s blog and it starts with 20 pushups and 1 crunch, followed by 19 pushups and 2 crunches, etc until you hit 1 pushup and 20 crunches.  In the end, it is 210 pushups and 210 crunches.  I took it nice and easy my first time through because I wasn’t sure if I would make it through.  Nevertheless, my arms were a bit rubbery today during my swim.  Next time, I will try and speed it up by taking shorter breaks between sets.

Last Month

Overall, I had a good month numbers wise despite it being a short month.  At the end of January, my goal was to spend more time biking this month and I met that goal.  Last month, I did 7 rides for 8 hours, 20 minutes.  This month, I knocked out 10 rides for 13 hours 23 minutes.  Not only that, but I was able to do my first outdoor ride to Grand Haven.  My running and swimming were a bit off from last month, but that is mainly because of two scheduled light weeks.  I also did about 10 strength workouts throughout the month.  I say “about 10” because I still haven’t found a great way of keeping track of these workouts – Sporttracks just isn’t doing it for me.

As for this month, more of the same.  I have one more long run this week – 22-23 miles.  After that, the taper begins for my marathon.  I took the final step yesterday and actually registered for the race.  Yeah, I know, I like to procrastinate.  I had until the 9th before the price went up so I figured I would wait until the bitter end to make sure my training was going as planned.

One last note.  I emailed the Honolulu Marathon race director to find out when the 2010 date was going to be (the website still has 2009 info).  December 12th is the date.  It looks like we have some planning to do now! YAY!

I had a pretty good weekend to wrap up January. 

I started the weekend with my weekly Friday long run.  It was a light-ish week this week with a long run of 14 miles.  After 20 last week, 14 miles seemed like a dream.  If you remember my post about the 20 miler, I felt great for the first 14 miles and it went downhill from there.  So, I figured that 14 would be a breeze.  The funny thing is that this time, I felt great for the first 8 miles and it hurt for the final 6 miles.  I guess it is always the last 6 that are the hardest even if it isn’t a marathon.  I ended up finishing better than I thought I would in 1:57:59 for an 8:25 pace.

I took all of Saturday off to rest.  While I may not have run, biked, or swam, it was hardly a rest day.  There was no kicking up the feet and sitting on the couch.  Jennie and I spent the day cleaning the house from top to bottom.  At the end of the day we ended up with a sparkling clean house and a pile of stuff to take to Goodwill.  It was a very satisfying feeling.

Today, I got back to action and actually did a mini triathlon throughout the day.  I started this morning with an hour on the trainer.  I did some one leg drills (my new evil friend) at the end of the ride for good measure.  After lunch, I headed up to the pool and did 1800 yards in the pool with 8x100yds as the core set.  I actually hit 1:28 for my first 100 – first time under 1:30!  Unfortunately, I didn’t get under 1:30 again.  The rest were in the 1:34 – 1:36 range.

Later in the day, after getting a few more things done around that house, I headed out on my run.  It was pretty windy, but other than that the weather was a bit warmer than it has been.  I finished the run really strong with the last two miles coming in at 7:34 and 7:37.

In case you weren’t keeping track, that is an hour bike ride (19.6 miles), 1800 yard swim (1 mile), and 6 mile run for a total 26.6 miles in 2:28:57.  Too bad my T1 and T2 times were horrible otherwise it would have made for a good “race” .

Here are my totals for January:

Running was obviously the focus for January (and will continue to the focus until my April marathon). I’d like to get a few more bike rides in February than I did this month, but it is so hard to get motivated to ride on the trainer.  I’d actually even settle for the same number of rides, but for longer rides.

On the work front, things are settling down a bit.  I have put out most of the fires that January brought and things are starting to get cleaned up.  I will be spending the next couple weeks training a new hire, so I’ll have to reschedule my some of workouts because my schedule won’t be as flexible.  Nevertheless, I think I should have more time for training.

Another month in books.  The two highlights from October are the two running races I had.  The first was the Brooksie Way Half Marathon were I PR-ed with a 1:37:33.  The second was the Grand Rapids Marathon which was also a PR of 3:47:02.  And with that, my 2009 racing season has come to a close.  I’m still working on game plan for next year, but have been so busy with work that I haven’t been able to sit down and schedule everything yet.  Hopefully I can put together a rough draft in the next week or so.

The Numbers

September has come and gone.  And with it, another packed month of training (as well as the warm weather).  My race season (triathlons at least) has come to a close.  I have a few more running races yet this year, including a half marathon this weekend.  On top of that, I have some decisions to make this month on what my race schedule will be next year.  My basic options are 1) tackle an Ironman next or 2) focus on improving my half Ironman by doing 2 or 3 races next year and then tackle the full Ironman in 2011.  I know I could be ready for an Ironman next year, however I am leaning to the 2nd option to ensure that I am fully prepared to do my best.  Decisions, decisions…

Monthly Totals