Swim Week and an Attempt at 20 miles

Time for my weekly update, as promised!

This last week was almost all swimming for me. I ended up doing 8-9 hours in the pool, and somewhere close to 15,000 yds. Almost everyday was a 4000 yd workout, which was close to 1000 more than my previous longest workout. It was fun, but it got a little tiring towards the end of the week. Unfortunately I didn't do as much as I had planned. Life always gets in the way, and this last week was an important week for school, so that cut into some of my workout time. I always advocate that its ok to miss workouts due to life issues.

The toughest workout this week was my long run earlier today. I attempted to do 20 miles in preparation for that marathon I keep hinting at doing. I would have made it too if my IT Band had not flared up. I was reduced to walking for most of the last few miles. I only got in about 16 miles of pure running. I did 16 miles last week...so no improvement. I hate it when my body fails me. I felt very weak and useless as my running partners finished the run with no problems. I'll pick myself up though. Next week I'll take another stab at it and see what happens.

One reason for my failure may have been jumping up to that distance too soon. Its not always advisable to decide to start training for a marathon 1 1/2 months from the actual race. And, of course, its not advisable to start your long run training by running 16 miles one week and jumping up to 20 the next week. 18 miles would probably have been more ideal, but as you know I didn't even make it 18 before crapping out. I'm chalking this one up to experience. The goal of running the marathon is to overcome adversity and pain and become more mentally strong from it. So I'm well on my way to doing that.

On another note, the weather looks to be nice this week. I am hoping to take the bike out a few times this week. Hopefully I can start getting into bike shape again. Adding biking into the plan will help with the IT Band problems as well, I hope. They say that you can get better running fitness by biking (but not vice versa).

That's it for this week. Sorry for the boring post, I will need to think of a way to be more creative. :P

FiveFinger Shoes!!!

Barefoot running is the newest fad, and I'm buying into it. Just got my new fivefinger shoes, and can't wait to take them out for a hike or a run.

For more on barefoot running check out Rick's blog, Northwoods Endurance 2.

Transition

This week was a recovery week for me. I ended up using more as a transition week instead. They are basically the same the thing, but a transition period is one of more unstructured training. I was a bit tired overall on Monday and Tuesday, still recovering from the weekend ski. It was important for me to start feeling completely recovered going into this weekend because I didn't want to come back to hard training too soon.

So far, I'm not sure if I am totally recovered. I still feel tired, but this is mostly because of the workouts I chose to do this week. My wednesday run ended up being a tempo run. It felt great, but I'm still sore in some spots from that. On Thursday I had a pretty rough day at work, and got some negative energy out by jumping in the pool for a 1000 yard time trial. That went pretty well. I wasn't too excited about my time (15:15), but I wasn't unhappy with it either. It was a good marker as to where I am at. Yesterday I ran the Lake Linden 5k course, and went a bit faster than I had planned on doing. There was a nasty cold wind too, and my legs were getting tight in the middle section. But, again, it was still nice to get out and run.

I am thinking about doing the Journey's Marathon...and too start training for that I'm adding long runs to my weekend workouts. Tomorrow is going to be a 2.5 hr run. Jumping into marathon training this late may not be the best thing, but I think its fine with my specific goals for this marathon. I'll divulge those goals later. Thinking about a marathon brings up the question, does one NEED to do a marathon when training for an ironman?? I've heard both sides of the story. If you have any thoughts on this topic, please chime in. I'm very interested as to what you all think.

Great Bear Chase A Success!

Hello all,

I am officially listing myself as an official cross country skier. I just completed my first ski race today. I went all out and did the ski marathon. The race was originally a 50k, but due to warm weather and poor conditions the course was shortened to a 42k. Doesn't matter to me. Today 42k=50k! I am still going to list off a ski marathon as one of my accomplishments! I finished in a time of 3:31:56, not too bad ;)

When I say poor conditions, I also mean some of the worst conditions you will have to ski in. Really it was not fun. I am positive that with better conditions I would still have been able to do the whole 50k in roughly the same time.

Either way, I did it! I don't even care if I was near to last place :P At least I finished, which I know more than a few people decided to drop out half-way through. I was not one of them, and now I can check off another lifetime accomplishment on my list. It won't be the last ski marathon I do, no way. Looking forward to next year!!!

Base Training Update

I'm back with an update on how base training is going. Unfortunately I was not able to live up to my promise of completing all my workouts on the first week of base. This was mostly due to my recovery from my first ever snowboarding experience. Let's just say, whiplash is not fun...

I may not have completed all the workouts, but I was able to complete almost all my planned volume for the week. I ended up getting 10 1/2 hours in for the week out of a planned 11 1/2. I thought it was a pretty good week. The breakthrough workout of the week was definitely the 4 hour ski. Yes, 4 hours! That's the longest I've ever exercised continuously for. And if you think about it, the bike portion of my ironman race will probably take at least 8 hours. I've got a long way to go, but it felt great to hit such a milestone.

The long skiing is, of course, helping me get ready for the 50k ski race I am doing. Update! The race has been shortened to 44k due to course changes caused by weather conditions.... I'm pretty disappointed about not doing a whole 50k, but I'm even more disappointed with the warm weather that's causing all the problems. I tried to do a good ski workout today since I've been out of town and not able to ski all week, and the conditions were super slow and soft. It felt like I was doing a lot more work and still going half as fast. I'm anxious about the weekend, I hope its not too bad. Well, the point of doing the long race was to experience the agony and guts it takes to push to the finish after it starts to hurt. I'm gonna get that alright, I just wish the point at which it starts to hurt didn't have to be within the first 5k...

Training for this 50k (ahem...44k) has got me thinking about how my plan is currently set up. I am not treating this race as an important race in my schedule. Because of this, I technically don't have a taper for this race. My race week volume (this week!) is at a little reduced volume compared to normal, but last week was a normal base 2 week. On the other hand, due to other stresses in my life (aka qualifying exams...) I did not get as much volume as the first week of base. Only 9.5 hours out of a planned 14. And since I'm on track for even less this week, I am starting to wonder if I am actually tapering for this race. This is both good and bad. If I start to taper for this race, I would potentially have a mini peak. This obviously helps my ski race, but it might hinder my future growth and development for this upcoming triathlon season. Now, this mini peak would certainly not ruin my triathlon season, or cause me to overtrain for my ironman. I just wonder how much it really would effect my peak for the ironman. In reality, this is a much better time to peak for a different race than a race in July or August. In the end, I am ok with doing a mini taper for this race. I guess I only bring it up to show you readers that what you do in the early part of your season, could come back to haunt you or help you in your later part of the season where most of your A races will be occurring. Just something to think about.

I'm going to close this post with a promise. I've been pretty bad about keeping you updated about my training. I started this blog with the intention of doing a weekly post so I could relate that weeks training. Not only to let you all know about my progress, but to also include any stories I might have to relate, and to also give you a glimpse at the type of training regimen that one takes to train for an ironman. So, I am promising to post every week from now on, even if its just a few sentences relating how things are going.

Cheers!