So, rewind to a few months ago when I was putting together my training schedule.  For some reason, I chose to do level 5 out of Matt Fitzgerald’s book.  I thought it was a good idea.  I did level 4 last year and I wanted to step it up a bit.  However, level 5 is kicking my butt.  This week, I am already at 9 and a half hours with 3 more hours scheduled for the weekend.  I suppose this is good practice for Ironman training when weekly training hits 20+ hours.

Here is a glimpse at what I have been up to.

Tuesday: Easy 6 mile run around Reeds Lake.  I got a late start which meant that Jennie was able to bike along with me because she was home from work by the time I was able to run.

Wednesday: I started at the pool for 2300 yards with the main set being 4×300 yards.  I had some of my fastest 300’s ever hitting 4:45 and 4:47 for the 2nd and 3rd interval.  The other two were around 4:55 which is closer to the norm.  It was a busy day at the pool and the guy next to me was pretty fast which I think encouraged me to push it on the intervals.  After the pool, I did a ride out to Millennium Park.  The trails out there are incredible and they are still adding to them.  I did 31.63 miles in 1:41:51 and felt pretty good.

Thursday: Time for a brick workout.  The bike portion was 27.81 miles in 1:28:36.  I did a lap out to Cascade and then around Reeds Lake and Calvin a few times.  Riding out to Cascade includes a big downhill followed by a gradual 4 mile climb.  By the end of 4 miles, my legs always feel like rubber.  When I got done with bike ride, Jennie was just getting home from work.  So, while she got changed, I grabbed a granola bar and some water.  Then we were off for 5.5 miles in just under 45 minutes.  Despite just getting off the bike, I still averaged 7:52 min/mile on the run.

Friday (today): Back at the pool again.  This time was 2400 yards straight up.  I ended up doing 2500 yards because why stop at 96 lengths when you can do an even 100.  I finished in 44:06 which averages out 1:45 /100 yards.  I will be very happy if I can keep that pace in open water.  After the the pool, I had to do a 55 minute run.  I decided to do my favorite out and back 8 mile run.  I finished in almost exactly a 8:00 min/mile pace.  I felt great for the first 6 miles, but started to fall apart on the last 2 miles.

This weekend: I have a 2 hour bike ride and 1 hour run scheduled for Saturday with an off day on Sunday.  We are supposed to have crappy, rainy, cold, weather, so I may end up breaking up the workouts and doing one on Saturday and one on Sunday.  That way, I don’t have to go out twice in the same day and I stand a better chance of the weather improving on Sunday.  I was thinking of doing a duathlon on Sunday, but with the crappy weather forecasted, I don’t want to chance losing out on $60 if the race gets cancelled.  Instead, I might go out to Cannonsburg for my first trail run.

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!

Friday

Friday was my long run for the week.  Only 14 miles scheduled after 21 the week before.  Despite the shorter distance, it was a really tough run.  My legs were really beat up from my bike ride on Thursday.  On top of that, I was having acid reflux problems for nearly the entire run.  Very unpleasant.

In the end, I only made it 13 miles.  Part of it was exhaustion, part of it was poor distance estimating.  I thought that my final loop would get me up to 14 miles, but alas, I looked at my watch as I turned on the road home and was only at 13 miles.  I was too tired to even consider adding on an extra mile at that point.

After the run, I was still getting that acidy burning feeling in the back of my throat.  After a quick Google search, I found a couple potential remedies.  I tried what looked like the easiest solution – chewing gum – and it worked like a charm.  Within minutes, I was better.  I couldn’t believe it.  I may have to pack some gum for my next long run.

I finished off Friday with a 1950 yard swim in the evening.  Yes, I spend my Friday nights at the pool.  Exciting, I know.  I had a record swim, but more on that later.  I am hoping to devote a whole post to swim-related activities.

Saturday

I got a quick strength session in on Saturday morning before we packed up and headed across the state to the in-laws.  We have been wanting to see one of my bro-in-law’s basketball games, but they are normally during the week, so that doesn’t work.  He had a basketball tournament this weekend though, so we were able to catch 2 games. (They won both and the tournament.)

On top of that, I helped my father-in-law mount their new 50” plasma TV above their fireplace.  We still have some more work to do to hide the wires, but that will wait until the next trip.  Always fun to do projects.

Sunday

We got home late Sunday evening, so I had a late evening run ahead of me.  I didn’t start until after 9:00, so I donned my head lamp and reflective gear and headed out.  It felt great to stretch the legs out after a couple hours in the car.

Monday

Well, we got snow again – surprise, surprise. I spent a good part of the day shoveling the heavy wet snow.  It made for a pretty good cross training workout on my day off from running.  However, it is getting to the point where I don’t have anywhere to put the snow.  The piles at the end of the driveway are over my head, so I have had to start shoveling the snow down the street before I can pile it up in the front yard.  When is spring?

So, there you have it.  My weekend in review.

This week should be a bit easier as it is a recovery week.  A much needed recovery week.  Hopefully that means I will have more time to keep this blog updated so I don’t have to keep doing extended summaries.

Stay tuned!

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!!

We had a bit of a warm weather streak this past week.  So, I pulled my bike back off the trainer and out of the basement.  This ended up being one of my highest mileage weeks to date; mainly because I was able to get a couple of long bike rides in.

Running

I covered about 23 miles on foot this week.  Not as much running mileage as I would like, but I am trying to give my hamstring a bit of a rest.  It has flared up on me during a couple of runs, but nothing major.  I have tried to remember to ice it at night, but I usually forget because it only bothers me when I run and I forget about it afterwards.  As wanted, I got in one speed workout on Friday.  I did a 2 mile warm up, then 1/4 mile intervals on the track up the high school and then a cool down back home.

Swimming

Nothing too eventful on the water front.  I have pretty much settled into a 2500 yard workout routine each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I actually ended up going a little long this week with 7750 yards total.  There is a great group of regulars up at the pool which makes it a fun time (not that we can really talk while we swim).  At least we are all suffering (in a fun way of course) together.  I have been trying to mix up my workouts so that it doesn’t get too repetitive with some focused on endurance (longer intervals) and others focused on speed (shorter intervals).

Biking

Biking was by far my focus of the week.  With the warmer weather, I took as much advantage of it as I could.  I did a quick 20 mile ride on Tuesday.  It was still bit cool that day and I didn’t have a lot of time to devote to a ride.  Thursday was my miserable, yet wonderful, muddy ride to Grand Haven.  I clocked 40 that day even though it felt like much more. 

Then, on Sunday, with temperatures in the mid 60’s I headed out again.  I didn’t have a route in mind, but eventually found myself drawn to the White Pine Trail and 20 miles later I was in Rockford.  The trail was very crowded, especially as I got close to Rockford.  It was amazing how many grown men felt the need to weave side to side on the trail for no apparent reason whatsoever.  Also, I managed to (unintentionally) spook a number of people by saying “on the left” as I approached.  I didn’t know what else I go do, but people were jumping out of their skin when I tried to give fair warning.

Anyways, the ride was very enjoyable.  It ended up being just about 40 miles.  Compared to my ride to Grand Haven, this ride was nearly 18 minutes faster and a lot more enjoyable.

In the end, I managed 101 miles for the week with 3 rides and nearly 6 hours spent in the saddle.

All in all, it was another great week.  As for this week, I’ll probably try and do a bit more running this week as long as my hamstring cooperates.  We’ll see if the nice weather keeps up of if it is back to the trainer.  Stay tuned!