Week #4 Day #3 Swim and Run

For some reason, my swim was a little slow today.  I felt like my form was better, but I was slower and working harder.  I don't know, I'm just hoping to build up enough stamina and strength to get myself around the course in a decent time without drowning myself.

Tonight's run was much better than the previous run.  Way less pain and a much better pace.  Which leads me to believe that the slow pace caused the pain.  I guess I'm just going to have to step up the pace to get rid of the pain.

Week #4 Day #2 Cycle

The ride was fun.  Had a great high speed crash on a downhill.  The front tire just didn't have a enough grip as I was making a turn and just slipped out from under me.

Question:  Are you supposed to stop for a school bus with its lights on when you are on your bike?  I took the safe route and stopped for the bus.  First time I've ever had to do that.

Week #4 Day #1 Swim and Run

This week is a recovery week, so mileages and yardages are a little lower this week.

The swim was good, dialed it back to 750 yards today.  Continuing the interval training, but trying to focus on form and speed.

The run was PAINFUL!!!  About half way through the run, I started to get some pain on the outside of my right knee.  It definitely had an impact on my pace.

Week #3 Day #5 Swim and Run

Swim today wasn't bad, went back to interval training to hopefully work on speed.  I think my form goes to hell when I try to swim fast.  When I was purposely trying to swim slow in the warm up and cool down portions of my swim, those sections were really not that much slower than my lap times when I was trying to exert myself.  How I'm going to fix that problem, I'm not sure just yet.

The run was good.  When I turned the corner to head back east, the sun and wind were at my back, and warmed me up nicely.

Week #3 Day #4 Cycle

What a frigid ride.  I got about 1.5 miles out, and the tube on my Camelbak froze up.  Luckily I was able to get some water moving through the hose to get the blockage cleared.  Guess I should have been drinking a touch more.  My ride started on a nice little warmup route, then off to Luton Park for the meat of the ride.  On a side note, I wish I would have had a camera handy because some of the sites I saw with the sun shining through the ice on everything was awesome.  The freezing rain didn't effect the ride too much, I was a bit more cautious on the MTB portion of the ride focusing on technique which may or may not have been good.  I crashed twice on the trail, and both times I was flying right toward pretty substantial trees.  I did have to cut the ride sort however, because my future in laws were getting close to my place.  It was probably a good thing that I abbreviated the ride, because I think I was close to getting frostbite on one of my toes.  I almost forgot the other moment of panic I had on the ride.  The last 1/4 mile or so is a great downhill headed to my house.  I shifted out of my highest gear, because the road was starting to level out.  When I did that, coincidentally enough ice had accumulated on my bike to cause the back tire to rub on the accumulated ice.  That made me a bit nervous given the problems I had had with screwing up the rear-end of the bike last fall.   Luckily I didn't need the small chainring at all today, because the ice accumulation also made the front derailleur kind of unreliable.  Overall though, I loved the ride, just wish I had a solution for keeping my toes warm.

Week #3 Day #3 Swim and Run

Today I swam 1150 yards in the pool with warmup and cooldown.  The actual workout I did today was 17 laps, did them straight through with no stops.  I guess I will be able to swim the tri distance without having to stop.  The training program doesn't recommend this type of training, instead it suggests using interval training for the swim.  I will probably go back to that next week.


The run was good.  Ice, mother nature's equalizer.  One odd thing about the run if you look at the heart rate chart of this run, there is a really nice spike near the beginning that shot up 200 bpm.  I don't think I had enough liquid on the HRM strap, because I took a little spit and rubbed on it and my rate dropped to where it should be.

Week #3 Day #2 Cycle

I finally got to get my first MTB ride in today.  I managed to finish it up before the sleet really started to come down.  That didn't matter though, because it was a cold ass ride.  The trail had some spots that still had ice and snow on it.  I managed to get a snow burn on my leg in one spot where the snow took me down.  Anyway it was a good ride, and I decided to tack on a little extra by going around the block instead of straight home.

Week #3 Day #1 Swim and Run

Swim:  I'm pretty sure I did an extra lap today, because I bumped my sandals (I use them to count my laps) on the edge of the pool.  So I think I did an extra lap, but what could it hurt.

Run:  The run was good tonight.  It's the first time in a long time that I ran in the dark.  There's something very peaceful about running at 10 PM.

Catching up on posts

Thursday, March 17:  Finally got to the mileage I was hoping to hit on the bike.  I tried to hit a MTB trail, but still too much snow.  So I went down the road to the other trail I wanted to ride.  I got a ways down the trail through the snow, but finally had enough of the snow and turned around.

Week #2, Day #3 Swim and Run

Apparently I need to go back to school to count, because I did it again today at the pool.  I meant to only swim a half mile, but ended up with one extra lap in there.  I did the swim a bit different today.  The program calls for doing a lap and then resting 10 seconds.  I decided to break the workout into 4 lap segments.

The run was good tonight.  I'm glad it's warming up.  I'm really liking this route I've found to run though, there is some nice hills to negotiate on this route.

Week #2, Day 2 Snowed out

I really wanted to do some off-roading today on my ride.  That didn't happen, I tried two different trails and the snow was just too much for me.  Instead I did some road riding.  I should have known though that things weren't going to go according to my plans, because I managed to leave my Garmin at Rachael's place.  I used the Droid app to track my ride, and am working on a way to get it to load up here.  I didn't get in as long of a ride as I wanted, but with the hill work I did I felt like I made up for it.

Week #2, making things tougher

I'm making things harder on myself this week, because I missed my bike ride this past Saturday and I'm going to miss this upcoming Saturday.  I got to the pool today and was only supposed to do 300 yards.  I felt like this wasn't enough, so I decided I was going to do a half mile today.  I miscounted the number of laps, and ended up doing one extra.  It can't hurt.

Nothing too spectacular to talk about on the run.  Only had to do 3 miles, I know I should probably be paying closer attention to my heart rate and staying within some zone.  Screw that, decided to just push myself a bit harder and try to keep the pace closer to 9 minutes.  I'm kind of liking of this route that I've taken the past two runs, some great elevation change to contend with.

Week #1, Day #5

This week is probably is the easiest week of the program, which has been a good thing.  Yesterday was a day of rest and it felt good, because my muscles were a little sore from earlier in the week.  Today's run wasn't bad, it got a little chilly with the crazy wind that was blowing in some of the areas.

Week #1 Day #3 Swim and Run

Started out the day with a quick 300 yard swim, and a couple of drills.  My times were pretty good in the pool, but I just wasn't feeling it today.

Just like I was dreading the run today.  I was pretty tired this afternoon, and didn't feel like running.  I did heed Remus' advice and go run outside instead of on the stupid dreadmill.  Matt, you were right, the dreadmill was the cause of my knee pain.  Ran totally pain free this afternoon, it was great.  Here are the results:

Training Day #2

Today's training was a nice little 8 mile bike ride.   One really fun thing about the ride, was part of it was on a dirt road that still had some patches of ice.  Those ice patches made my sphincter tighten in a couple of spots.  I could have chosen a less demanding route for my ride today, but that won't get me ready to blast the trails at Fort Custer.  I thought all of the swimming I did in the off-season would have gotten me in much better shape than what it felt like today.  So, I'm blaming the cold I had for my decreased lung capacity.  It was pretty cool though to actually bust out the Garmin again, and be able to put something other than just words on my blog.

Not down with the sickness

Well, last week got eff'd because I came down with a cold.  Last Wednesday was the last swim for the week at 2000 yards.  It was a bit disappointing that I only got 4000 yards in at the pool last week.

Today I started the actual training program.  Started out the day with a pretty quick 300 yard swim.  Then I closed out the day with a 3.1 mile run.  It wasn't that great of a run. I started to get some knee pain, so I threw some walking into the run so as to not get things to messed up.  The other crappy thing about the run was it was on a treadmill, because I didn't figure it was the best idea to run outside while I'm still recovering from this cold.