So, the title of this post was supposed to be “Training Begins”.  At least that is what the title was when I sat down to start this post at the beginning of the week.  As you can probably guess, I never got around to finishing that post and now my official training is a week in the bag.

Monday was the first day of training for my first 2010 half Ironman (Racing for Recovery in June).  I’m doing a modified level 6 program from Matt Fitzgerald’s book.  On top of HIM training beginning, my training of a new employee started this week too.  Besides adding something else to my every growing plate of responsibilities, the training went very well. 

Monday

I started off the morning with a quick weights session.  My work training didn’t start until 10:00 and I needed to get some sort of exercise in to prep for sitting for hours.

Because I had to do training for work, I didn’t get to swim until the evening.  I found that really dislike swimming in the evening.  There is something about leaving the pool in the dark that is disappointing.  At least with my lunch time swim, I get that feeling of accomplishment know that there is still half of the day to go.

Tuesday

I had a second day off from running according to my marathon training plan.  However, I still had to do 70 minutes on the bike.  My workout was 7×20 seconds with 2 minute active recovery.  I also added in a few one leg drills at the end of the ride for good measure.

Wednesday

Wednesday was back to a relatively normal schedule so I had time to a lunch time swim as well as a 6 mile run.  It felt great to run again after 2 days off.  I finished the 6 miles in 46:29 (7:44 pace).  I was happy with this run because all of my splits came in under 8 minutes.

Thursday

Another busy work day.  I had to do some more work with my trainee as well as do a email migration for the entire company which meant lots of time on the phone and lots of GoToMeeting sessions to make sure everyone was setup correctly.  This meant I had to be at my desk all day.  When I finally finished up, I got in a 4 mile run.  I knew that I was going to have to follow up the run with an 1:45 on the trainer so I wanted to get the run does as fast as possible.  So, I basically treated the 4 miles as a speed workout.  I averaged 7:29 for the run and even hit 7:10 for mile 2.

As soon as I got home, I changed and hopped on the bike.  I had to do 1:45 at Z2.  Thankfully I had a copy of Terminator Salvation from Netflix which was 1:54 long.  It worked out perfect.  It was actually a pretty good movie too.  Not as good as T2 (side note: which was the first R rated movie I saw – just don’t tell my parents because I was only 12), but entertaining enough to keep me from getting bored.

Friday

Another run & swim day.  I switched things up and did my run before my swim rather than running later in the afternoon.  I took it nice and easy for the 7 miles and finished with an 8:00 pace.  I took it easy at the pool as well and only did 1800 yards instead of my usual 2500 yards.

Saturday

Today was an off day.  Completely, entirely, sit on my butt and do nothing off day.  Ok, well I wasn’t that lazy, but I did to quite a bit of sitting around.  When I wasn’t sitting around, Jennie and walked up to Reeds Lake for the annual kite festival.  They had free hot dogs, and hot chocolate too!!

I spent a better part of this evening putting together my training schedule for the spring and first part of the summer.  I can’t believe how long it took.  It is 11:00 now and I think I started around 5:00.  Granted there was a break for dinner and what not, but it can really be time consuming.

I started doing everything on the computer, but found that I needed to lay everything out on paper first.  Then, I took it all, entered it into Excel and imported it into Google Calendar.

This was my work area for the evening.

I already have a training schedule for my marathon in April, so I needed to merge it with a suitable half Ironman training schedule.  I chose the level 5 program from Matt Fitzgerald’s book. The first 10 weeks of training are a combination of marathon training I already have going along with the swim and bike workouts from the tri plan.  The second 10 weeks are straight from the tri plan. 

As I laid out my training, I realized that I need to work on my counting skills.  I miscounted the weeks for my marathon training and had to add in an extra week of training during the taper so that I would actually have enough workouts to get me through race day.

If you are interested in seeing the training plan, you can follow along on the sidebar of my blog or see the whole thing on Google Calendars.

This schedule will get me through June 6th – my first half Ironman of the season.  I still need to add to the schedule to keep up my training for the next two half Ironman later in the season.  Hopefully I can do that later this week or next weekend.  Also, I am still looking for an April or early May triathlon to do as a warm up so that the half Ironman isn’t my first tri of the season.  However, I think it is going to somewhat difficult to find a race in Michigan that early in the season because the water is still so cold.  If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

Work has kept me very busy this week.  I spent a couple days doing interviews, and I am so very glad that I don’t have to do them on a regular basis.  On top of that, I have a big project with a looming deadline that keeps getting interrupted by more pressing issues.  It is like one step forward, two steps back.  I guess I can be glad that this week has been an easy week in my training schedule.

Monday was technically a rest day, but I swam anyways.  I still had sore arms and abs from the circuit workout I did over the weekend, and this workout was more or less a way for me to stretch out the muscles.  I did a continuous 2500 yards pulling on and off each 250 yards.  I felt a lot better after the workout than I did before.

Tuesday, I took completely off.  It was very nice.  I wanted to jump on the trainer, but I was exhausted and decided to take it easy.

Wednesday, I did a swim and a run, but took both very easy.

Which brings us to today.  I woke up early and got a bit of work done right off the bat.  After that, I took some time to ride the trainer.  I did 2 hours while watching Chuck on the DVR.  I worked on riding in the aero position by alternating from the hoods to the aero bars every 5 minutes.  I followed up the ride with a 4 mile run this afternoon.  The run was pretty mundane, but the best part was that I got to wear shorts!  The temperature has been in the upper 30s this week, so I decided to take advantage of the veritable heat wave.

As for the rest of the week, I have a 6 mile run scheduled for tomorrow.  I may squeeze in a bike ride, but that is still up in the air.

This weekend, I am hoping to spend some time firming up a training schedule for my summer race schedule.  The start date of triathlon training is rapidly approaching, and I need to get some things down on paper.

It is finally time to look back at my goals from 2009 to see what I was able to accomplish.

Looking back at my goals from the beginning of the year, here are the goals I set and how I did

#1: Get under an 8:00 pace consistently

I realize now, this was a pretty vague goal.  An 8:00 pace when?  All the time?  Races only?  Overall, throughout the year, my runs averaged out to an 8:05 min/mile pace.  Most of my races, though, were faster than an 8:00 min pace, but I still have some work to do on lowering my pace on marathons.  Looking at all of my races, I averaged an 8:06 pace.  If I take out my miserable 10:13 min/mile pace at Steelhead, it brings my average down to 7:49.  So, I think I can count this goal as semi-completed.

#2: Finally have a sub-2 hour finish at the River Bank Run 25k

Success!!! I killed it with a 1:55:43 (7:24 pace).  I went into this race not sure if I was even going to try and go under 2 hours.  Everything seemed to be going wrong.  It was super rainy, and the original course was flooded, so they had to alter it, which added a couple extra hills.  Plus, I was in the middle of training for the Sunburst Marathon and I didn’t want to overdo it.  About 2 miles into the race, I felt good and was rocking miles in the low 7s, so I decided to see how long I could keep it up.  By mile 10, I knew I was in good shape and confident that I would be under 2 hours.  I kept pushing and couldn’t believe my time when I crossed the finish line.

On top of this run, I also went under 1:40 in the half marathon for another PR (1:37:13).  This wasn’t on my original list of goals because I didn’t have a half marathon planned.  However, this race presented itself to me and I decided to take up the challenge.

#3: Swim 3 times a week

I’ve pretty much held to the 3 times a week schedule the entire year. I did fall back to only twice a week during my serious marathon training, but I increased my yardage on the two days I did swim to make up for it.  Overall, I did 129 swims, which averages out to 2.5 swims per week.  I can live with that.

#4: Keep better swim metrics

I have gotten somewhat better at this.  At least I record the time spent on each workout.  I occasionally will time the individual intervals I do, but I don’t always record them when I get home.  I mainly record the times so that I can make sure I am staying consistent during the workout.  I could probably track more swim data, but at this point I don’t feel the need for it.

#$: Do more swim workouts (rather than just laps)

This goal has completely changed the way I swim.  I used to just go up to the pool and count lap after lap.  I would usually do a mile nonstop and be done.  By doing workouts, I have improved my form, endurance, speed, and enjoyability.  I have been using a variety of workouts from the Workouts in a Binder: Swim Workouts, as well as ones that I just make up on the fly.  The workouts have forced me to become friends with the pull buoy, kickboard, and fins.  On top of that, I started doing flip turns this year.  While the flip turns aren’t going to help me out in the middle of a lake during a swim, I think that they have helped to improve my breathing because I don’t get to rely on taking a big breath each time I touch the wall.

#6: Get a new bike

Check.  I got my new bike back in January, and I love it.  It fits me much better than my previous bike, which makes a huge difference.

#7: Bring down bike times

Here we go again.  Another extremely vague goal.  I should probably take a Goal Making 101 class or something.  I was still fairly new at biking at the start of the year, so I really didn’t know what to expect.  For the two races I did in both 2008 and 2009 (Tri Del Sol and Reeds Lake), I improved my times.  I averaged 19mph, 19.6mph in each race in 2008 and averaged 19.3mph and 21.0 mph in the same races in 2009.  Also, my overall speed in 2008 for all my workouts was 17.2mph.  This increased to 18.8 in 2009.

Overall

Overall, I think I did pretty well at meeting my goals.  I may not have met them letter for letter, but goals can change throughout the year as new challenges come up.  For instance, at the beginning of the year, I had no idea I would be doing a Half Ironman.  Had I known that at the beginning of the year, I may have trained differently with that goal in mind.  I am very happy with how 2009 turned out, and I can only hope that 2010 brings the same successes and experiences.

Stay tuned for my next post on my new goals for 2010!

This is a rest week for my marathon training schedule.  So, one would assume that with less time spent running, I could spend more time blogging.  Not so apparently.  With Christmas approaching and the shit hitting the fan at work, I’ve been otherwise occupied.

Nevertheless, I thought I would provide a quick update on how my training is going.

Long Run Friday

Last week saw a long run of 14 miles.  I actually felt pretty good on this run other than being starving.  I started the run later than I had wanted and ended up running through the lunch hour.  By the time I got home, I was famished.  I remedied this by consuming an entire frozen pizza.  This was also my longest iPod-free run.  Going into the run, I actually was dreading the distance and feared that I would be missing the music towards the end of the run.  Mile 12 is when I actually thought about the iPod.  And it wasn’t because I was missing it.  I basically thought, “Hmmm, this is about where I thought I was going to be wanting some music – I guess not.”

Long Ride Saturday

Saturday was a biking day.  I did 2 hours on the trainer; my longest effort on the trainer this season.  I tuned into the Ironman Kona coverage at 4:30 and hopped on the bike.  It made for good motivation to keep going.  I even found myself enjoying the commercials and not fast forwarding through them.  However, I wish the coverage would have been longer and that they would have focused on more age groupers. 

Sunday

I just had to do an easy 6 on Sunday.  After 14, the six felt like nothing.  I actually ended up just running wherever my feet took me.  It was probably the most meandering route I have done it a while, but it was nice to just cruise along without a care in the world.

Monday/Tuesday

Monday and Tuesday were off days for running.  I can’t remember that last time I took two days off running in a row.  Even after my last marathon, I was back two days later for a short 3 mile run.  However, I decided to follow the schedule and give my legs some rest.  It should be especially good for my hamstring which acts up on me every once in a while.

That said, I couldn’t simply do nothing.  So, instead of running, I have swam both days and biked on Tuesday.  On Monday, I did 2500 yards straight at the pool in about 45 minutes.  After the swim, I went out to lunch to Yesterdog with a couple guys from the pool.  Nothing like a couple of Yesterdogs to cancel out the benefits of a long swim.  Tuesday was another 2500 yards, but in 500 yard intervals this time instead. 

I followed up the swim on Tuesday with 60 minutes on the trainer.  Didn’t really want to do it, but I want to keep my legs (and butt) in shape for when I can bike outside again.

And On

The rest of week continues to be an easy week run-wise.  I’ll total out the week at only 18 miles which will be both weird and nice.

I probably won’t be back blogging until next week sometime after the holiday craziness winds down a bit.  Until then, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!  I hope Santa brings everyone the Cervelo, Garmin, and other tri-gear they want!