Thursday, June 22, 2006

great run, great swim

Run - 14.5 miles, 2:07 - flat and rolling hills
Swim - 4000m, 1:15

Both workouts today were awesome! I stayed strong until the end on the run and had a fairly good pace considering the hills. I wasn't going super easy, but it felt comfortable the whole time. I ran from home to the Arboretum, did the 6.2 mile loop, and then ran back home. I tried a new gel - AccelGel Kiwi Strawberry and it kind of tasted like yogurt. It had protein in it and didn't taste like eating a spoonful of sugar which was a nice change. The only thing I didn't like about it was that the packets are filled with excess air, so they are bulkier than other gels to carry.

I had a great swim too. I am working on keeping my forearm and hand in alignment during the catch and pull phase of the stroke in order to generate more power. I am also trying to make sure that I am always rotating enough. Like on the run, I was going at a very manageable pace, pushing myself just a bit. This gives me confidence that I will be able to use my Ironman swim (3800m) as a warmup for the rest of the race and still be around my goal pace of 1:15.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

two nap kind-of-day

Bike - 23 miles, 1:24, Ave Sp 16.5 - 2 x 15 minutes moderate hard w/ 5 min recovery

Things are going well in training this week. In the rest of life, they are not going very well, but in training they are going well. It was a beautiful summer evening to go on a bike ride and after my ride, I enjoyed a nice dinner of potatoes and steamed cauliflower on my porch. I took the day off of work today and was pretty sleepy so I took two luxurious two hour naps.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

longing for long rides

Bike - 19 miles, 1:10 - including 5 x 6 minutes hard w/ 2 min recovery
Run - 3.1 miles, 26:30 - transition run at moderate pace
Swim Lesson

My legs were plagued with lactic acid leftovers from the Horribly Hilly for this ride but I managed to push hard on the intervals nonetheless. Then, my legs felt dead and sluggish for the first part of the run but got moving faster after the first 12 minutes. I am determined to improve my brick workouts and not let the dead-legged run get to my head.

I am not sure when this happened, but my biking is the strongest right now and my running is the weakest. It was opposite last year. I have come to love riding my bike and getting out in the country away from people and traffic. I feel comfortable and strong on my bike. I look forward to my long rides the most. Hills don't bother me anymore because I know they don't get much harder than anything I have done on the Horribly Hilly ride or in Hawaii and I made it through those just fine. I am gaining confidence that I can manage just about any terrain.

figuring out my training plan

[6/19/06 Monday]
Swim - 3500yd, 1:06 - main set: 5 x 200@3:12 w/ 30sec RI, 7 x 100@1:37 w/ 20 sec RI
Strength workout - assisted pull ups, assisted dips, body rows, cable pull, cable punch, swimmers, hanging leg raises (3 x 12), varied crunches (100)

Triathlete magazine has a "lab rabbit" section where they give an age-group triathlete a training plan and track his/her progress up until the goal race. This month's magazine begins a feature on a guy from Wisconsin named Dirk who is training for the WI Ironman. I met Dirk as I was watching the Verona Triterium triathlon on Sunday. I decided to try out a few things from his plan for an Ironman PR, so that's where today's swim workout came from. It was tough to keep up the pace for all the repeats, but it feels like something I should be doing on a regular basis. Recently my workouts have gotten less structured for some reason, and have lacked the speed focus to give me as much of a racing edge as I want. This should help me tune up.

My current focus has now shifted to increasing volume for Ironman while building in specific speed sets tailored to my sprint, Olympic, and half Ironman distance races coming up in the next six weeks. I am not going to do much tapering for the non-Ironman races because it takes too much time and gets me off track. I sat down with my training plan tonight and came up with a schedule for myself for the next four weeks. The core of it is based on an Ironman training plan but I was also sure to build in race-specific workouts based on what is recommended for the shorter distance races. I feel better about my training now that I have something laid out that is concrete.

I contacted the Horribly Hilly timing people and my results are now listed online.

Monday, June 19, 2006

HHH results

[6/18/06 Sunday]
Run - 60 min, 6 miles - treadmill/track recovery run
Swim - 2600yd, 50min - mostly drills and technique work

This was a recovery day after the Horribly Hilly ride yesterday. I was a little sore, but not too bad. My plan for today's run was to keep a 10 minute pace and get a sense of exactly what that feels like. Running periodically on the track or treadmill are good for learning how different paces feel. It is hard to know that precisely while outside. Lately I have been feeling out of touch with putting numbers on my exertion levels.

The results are up for the Horribly Hilly ride and sadly, something went wrong with my chip and my time did not get recorded. My watch said 4:51 and that puts me in as the 11th female finisher out of 78. I am really happy with that. All the hill practice I did made a difference.