IM CdA Training - Week 4

Week 3 was a bit of a weird one, as it relates to training.  If you happened to see one of my previous posts, then you saw the picture of one of the blisters on my hand.  Well, those blisters have since dried up and left my hands extremely dry and peeling when the skin is now dead.  Because of this, I felt it was in the best interest of my hand-model worthy hands that I take the week off from swimming in hopes to expedite the healing process.  Happily, they are close enough to healed that I will resume normal swim training on Tuesday!  Week 4 is a great week...it's a recovery week!  So here's the plan:

Monday - REST (always my favorite day of the week!)

Tuesday - 45 minute swim.  1 hour bike.

Wednesday - 1 hour swim.  35 minute run.

Thursday - 1 hour bike.  35 minute run.

Friday - 45 minute swim.  1 hour bike.

Saturday - BRICK - 1 hour 15 minute bike with a 25 minute run.

Sunday - 1 hour swim.  1 hour run.

Is this what I sound like?

One of the latest trends around the internet is to create a video entitled "Sh*t people say", only "people" is switched out for a grouping of people, such as yogis, vegans, runners, etc.  One of my friends recently sent me one of these videos.  The video is below, but if you can't see it, you can also find it on YouTube:

Now, The Wife thought this was hilarious.  She seems to think that someone has been listening in on all of my conversations for the last couple of years and basically made a video of everything I say.  And I have to disagree...I don't go to Starbucks!

Pretty funny video though.  There's a plethora of similar videos, so if you find yourself bored some time, just give the ol' YouTube a little search and see what you come up with!  As for me, it's time to get back into my base phase and go ride my trainer while I focus on watts and then recover with compression socks because they aid recovery while I focus on my nutrition and figure out some races to use as B and C races building up to my A race to round out this season.  (there, did I sound like the video?)

Thanks for reading!

Wind burn?

That's my thumb, with a blister from supposed "wind burn"

So I'm not really sure what happened.  All I know is, about 4 or 5 day ago, I started getting blisters on my right hand (my left hand has the same burn, just not any blisters).  It's mainly on my thumb, as you can see in the above picture, but also on my middle finger (I didn't want to give you all the bird, so I'll just keep that photo to myself).

Last week, for one of my rides, I basically rushed out the door to get going on my bike ride and forgot to wear my gloves.  It was a pretty cold and windy day, but nothing excessive.  If I remember correctly, it was about 50*F when I was out riding.  I didn't notice anything for a few days.  Actually, it was after I went running a couple days later, in again cold and windy weather.  The day after that run, I started to notice little blisters where these "burns" were.  And for the next few days, these blisters just kept growing and growing, until finally they covered most of my thumb and I now seem to hit them on a hard object about 5 times a day, which is quite painful.

So what does this mean?  Well, it means that I probably will sit out for the next couple of swim workouts.  I can't imagine that soaking an open sore in an over-chlorinated pool can be all that great for me.  I'm hoping that by my Friday swim I'll be close enough to healed that I can swim, but only time will tell.  It also means that I am absolutely going to make sure that I wear gloves for every bike ride.  Pretty lame if you ask me.

Anyways, just wanted to give a quick update on my first injury of the Iromna CdA training season (if you want to count this as an injury that is).  Thanks for reading!

IM CdA Training - Week 3

Is it just me, or are these weeks flying by?!  Seriously though, I feel like I take a day off on Monday, start back up on Tuesday, and all of the sudden it's Sunday again and I'm getting ready to take another day off.  Crazy!  So far I am really enjoying this training plan.  It's early on, so everything is very relaxed and quite fun.  In week 2, I put in just over 9 hours of training and just over 100 miles of training all together.  That's a little less than week 1, but there was no "long bike" this week (which there is again in week 3!).  So, week 2 is in the books, and week 3 is as follows:

Monday - REST!

Tuesday - 1 hour swim.  1 hour 15 minute bike.

Wednesday - 1 hour swim.  1 hour run.

Thursday - BRICK workout: 1 hour bike followed by 30 minute run.

Friday - 1 hour swim.  1 hour 20 minute bike.

Saturday - 3 hour bike.  35 minute recovery run.

Sunday - 1 hour swim.  1 hour 20 minute run.

Good luck to anyone else that's training this week!

The legs of a 70 year old triathlete

I was perusing the world wide web yesterday and came across a pretty sweet post on another bloggers' page.  This guy, Steve, read an article comparing a 40-year old triathletes legs, a 70 year old triathletes legs, and a 74 year old sedentary persons legs.  The images are pretty interesting, as well as the actual article that go along with the images.  If you just want to see the images, here they are:

This is a view as if the legs were cut off mid-thigh and you are looking straight at them, with the white dot in the middle being the femur.  Think "ham".

The blog where I found this photo, and part of the article is Steve in a Speedo.

The original article can be found here, written by Laura McIntyre.

Enjoy!

Chrissie Wellington taking a break from Ironman

I was shocked to see a post on Facebook saying that 4x Ironman World Champion (and undefeated at the Ironman distance!) Chrissie Wellington announced that she will be taking a break from Ironman in 2012.  Rather than me telling you all about it, you can go to her website to read the actual post from the legend herself.

The announcement can be found on her website by clicking here.

Hopefully she'll be more successful at her other endeavors than Chris McCormack has been...doh! (no disrespect intended...)

IM CdA Training - Week 2

Week 1 was a heck of a week!  I did over 10 hours of training, and this is probably the easiest week there is.  Surprisingly, it didn't really seem like too much training though.  Most of the workouts were about an hour long, with a long bike and long run at the end of the week.  Not too bad.  So, on to week 2.

Monday - REST (monday is always going to be a rest day.  I'm trying to make sure that I always have a rest day, which is something I didn't do last year...)

Tuesday - 1 hour swim.  1 hour 10 minute bike.

Wednesday - 1 hour swim.  1 hour run.

Thursday - 1 hour bike.  45 minute run.

Friday - 1 hour swim.  1 hour 10 minute bike.

Saturday - BRICK workout - 1 hour bike followed by 30 minute run.

Sunday - 1 hour swim.  55 minute run.

And that's it!  Not too much, right?  Well, it all depends on what pops up in the other aspects of life (which ultimately are more important!).  Since I was lazy in getting this post up, I can already tell you that Monday went well (ha!), and so did Tuesday!  And Wednesday is looking promising as I'll be swimming with The Captain, and he'll probably join me for the run as well.  Good times!

Thanks for reading!

Dehydration and IMAZ 2011

A few months ago, I wrote up a recap of my IMAZ 2011 marathon, and talked a little about what went wrong.  In short, I stopped taking in fluids during the bike portion, which ended up taking its toll on my during the run.  I came across some info that better explains what happened.

Instead of posting the entire article, I'll just post the pieces that apply to my situation.  You can read the article, in its entirety, by clicking here.

First off, a bit of "duh" information"

"Water is primarily lost from the body via urine, gastrointestinal tract, evaporation from skin, and respiration and is exacerbated by heat, humidity, or fluid restriction during exercise (Barr, 1999)."

I think that part is pretty self explanatory.  In my case, I was peeing, a lot.  It wasn't a hot day, but for some reason, my body was still getting rid of fluids like crazy.  Next point:

"Endurance performance is affected by dehydration as the lower blood volume creates cardiovascular strain, which is exhibited by an increased heart rate and decreased stroke volume (ACSM, 1996). Dehydrated individuals show increased muscle glycogen utilization during prolonged exercise, possibly as a result of higher body temperatures, increased catecholamine levels, or a combination of the two (Barr, 1999; Shirreffs, 2005)."

Just an explanation on how dehydration can affect the endurance athletes performance.  Here's that part that is really important:

"All concluded that dehydration of 2% body mass consistently showed diminished endurance performance in both temperate and hot climates, especially when the duration of exercise was greater than 90 minutes (Barr, 1999; Shirreffs, 2005)."

For me, weighing around 165 lbs on race day, that would mean that once I had lost enough fluids to equal 3.3 lbs, or drop me to a weight of 161.5 lbs, I would start to show a decrease in endurance performance.  Judging by the amount of fluid that I was peeing each time I took a "natural break", I am quite sure that I easily evacuated more than 3.3 lbs, and was nowhere near replacing that amount of fluid.  And that doesn't even take into account the amount of fluid lost from sweating and breathing!  My body was hurting so badly for fluids, and I did the exact opposite of what I should have done.  I should have just kept drinking and stuck to my nutritional plan.  Oh well...that's why I signed up for another Ironman!

Now, I'm not a doctor, and I am not going to, for one minute, pretend that I am all-knowing about dehydration or any other medical problems that can happen during endurance sports.  I just happened to come across a piece of work originally written by K. Doyle, MS, CSCS July 25, 2005.  Again, you can read that paper here.

One last thing...GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE PARTICIPATING IN THE ROCK N ROLL HALF MARATHON AND MARATHON!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for reading!

Insight into the thoughts of a runner

Some genius out there decided to strap a camera to himself and film himself running, then went back and recorded some thoughts over that footage. The result is pretty awesome. Check it out here if you can't see the video below...

Now that's a good video.  Thanks for reading!

My 2012 race schedule...so far.

I figure now would be a good time to put my race schedule on paper, or into The Matrix.  This may or may not change, depending on how things turn out with ActiveAmbassadors.com and/or Team Marathon Bar this year.

April 21, 2012 - RAGE Triathlon (half iron distance) in Las Vegas, NV
June 24, 2012 - Ironman Couer d'Alene in Couer d'Alene, ID
October 21, 2012 - Soma Triathlon (half iron distance) in Tempe, AZ

Those are three long races.  They are all going to be very exciting for a few different reasons.  RAGE is going to be my first triathlon outside of the friendly confines of Arizona, so I'm pretty excited for that.  Ironman CdA is going to be fun because, well, it's an Ironman, and there's about 6 other people that I know that are also racing (and probably more!).  And Soma will be fun because I'm planning on completing that race with my dad.

It's looking to be a good year.  Hopefully I can stick with my training plan and capitalize on this awesome race schedule!

Ironman CdA Training starts now!

I've procrastinated long enough, and I'm officially at the point where I can't twiddle my thumbs any more.  Well, to tell the truth, I haven't really been slacking too much (I just did a 2.5 hour bike ride on my trainer on Saturday!), it's more that I actually have my training plan in my possession and it just so happens to be a 24-week training plan.  And that's today!

The training plan that I'm going to be using is like many other training plans out there.  It has base, build, and peak portions of it and also has built-in rest.  The plan I have also gives me exact workouts for every training session, which is nice for me.  Without a specific plan, I tend to just coast, or push too hard.  The beauty of the plan I have is that I actually have 10 different levels of my plan, so if at some point I'm finding it to be too easy (not likely) or too hard (very likely), then I can just adjust my training plan according, up or down a level.

Overall, this plan is going to be a few notches above the plan I did for Ironman Arizona.  And that's mainly because I won't be making it up as I go!  Ha!  It starts in Week 1 with 8,100 yards of swimming,  5 hours and 40 minutes of cycling, and 2 hours and 48 minutes of running.  The peak week (which is week 22, or 2 weeks before the race) will top out at 14,325 yards of swimming, 10 hours and 35 minutes of cycling, and 4 hours and 58 minutes of running.  Let's just agree that at this point, week 22 looks to be pretty rough.  But that's why I train, right?

So, rather than post what each workout is going to be (because I don't want to get in any trouble with copyright stuff), I'm going to post a generic weekly schedule of the sport and approximately how long each workout will be.  And so it begins...

Week 1:

Monday - REST (I like the way this plan is looking!)

Tuesday - Swim base intervals (1 hour) and a foundation bike ride (1 hour)

Wednesday - Swim base intervals (1 hour) and a foundation run (45 minutes)

Thursday - Bike/Run brick workout (1 hour total)

Friday - Bike power intervals (1 hour 10 minutes) and Swim fartlek intervals (1 hour)

Saturday - Long bike ride (2 hours 30 minutes) and recovery run (30 minutes)

Sunday - Swim base intervals (1 hour) and long run (1 hour and 10 minutes)

Ok, so I actually just got pretty tired just typing all of that.  That can't be good!  The positive is, I actually already did this exact plan last week...I thought I'd test it out and see if I could handle it.  The difference is, now it's for real!

So there you have it.  Week 1 is all lined up and ready to go.  It's definitely going to be an interesting journey, and I'm sure I'll have some good stories along the way.  Thanks for reading!

A look back at 2011

First off, happy new year!  I got a little carried away with all of the festivities around the Christmas/New Years holiday season and unintentionally put my blogging on hold.  I'm sure you've been checking my site frantically, wondering if I was still alive.  In any case, just like everyone else in the world, I'm going to take a look back at my 2011 year and see what I accomplished (or in other words, see how much time I spent doing this triathlon stuff instead of other, possibly more important things.  Oops!)

Total Stats

Let's first look at my favorite sport...swimming.  Alright, so I pretty much hate swimming.  But it's just one of those love/hate relationships really.  I love triathlons, but I have swimming.  So it seems I have to find a way to enjoy it.  I jumped into the pool, or the lake, a total of 43 times last year.  That's not even one swim each week.  And for a typical triathlon training plan, there's at least two swims per week, which means I obviously didn't do very well at following the swimming portion of my plan.  I did swim a total of 47.57 miles, so I guess that's ok.  But it's nowhere near what it should be.  All together, I spent just over 27 hours in the water.  Yikes!

Next, let's take a look biking.  Riding my bike has always been fun, but now that I have my new speed demon, I really, really enjoy riding my bike.  I was pleasantly surprised when I saw my bike totals for last year.  I rode my bike(s) a total of 163 times last year (not including my beach cruiser!).  That adds up to over 223 hours...over 9 days of bike riding time!  I added up all of the elevation gain that I took on during my 9 days of riding, and it added up to 64,374 ft of climbing.  Now add that climbing to the rest of the riding that I did, and I totaled 3,970.39 miles in 2011.  That's a lot of time on an uncomfortable bike saddle!

And now for the running.  Running has been a bit interesting ever since I had a pair of stress fractures a few years ago.  I've been much more open to running on a treadmill, even though most people look down on treadmill running.  Regardless, I've definitely improved my running, and done a lot of it on a treadmill. I ran  on 134 separate occasions, with 72 of those being on a treadmill.  I ran for a total time of 136 hours, and 1 second.  And in all of that time, I ran 875.31 miles.

All together, I traveled over 4,900 miles, did over 462 hours of swimming/biking/running, and burned 175,022 calories!  What's crazy is that I know I ate even more calories than that!

Major Race accomplishments
I started 2011 off with a bang.  In January, I was slated to attempt the Walt Disney World Goofy's Race and a Half challenge, which is a half marathon on Saturday and a marathon on Sunday.  Well, being the glutton that I am, I added a 5k on the Friday before all of this (which is unofficially referred to as the "Dopey" challenge).  Not only did I finish this challenge, but I set a new PR for my marathon time and qualified for the Boston Marathon!

My next major accomplishment was setting yet another PR.  This time, it was in the half marathon distance at the Disneyland half marathon.  I ended up running a 1:29:37, which was good enough for 6th place in my age group!

Up next was my top priority race for the year...Ironman Arizona.  I seemed to be having some luck improving my PRs, so I was keeping my fingers crossed that I could keep this streak going.  And I did. I shaved off about an hour and a half from my last Ironman Arizona time, finishing in 11:39:49.

The final, and possibly the biggest race accomplishment I had during the 2011 year was running the Las Vegas half marathon with my wife.  The longest race she had completed before Vegas was the 5k back in Disney World in January.  Sharing that experience with her was definitely the icing on the cake for my athletic year.

So what's next?  Well, last year I did a lot more running races than I did triathlons, which seemed to be good for me because I'm actually a better runner than any of the other sports.  This year, I actually only have 3 races on my schedule so far...2 half iron distance races and one Ironman.  If all goes will on the ActiveAmbassdor.com front, then I might be adding a few more races to that list.  My goal race for the year is Ironman Coeur d'Alene in June, and I'll just have to see what happens after that.

I hope that you all were happy with what you accomplished during last year, and keep that momentum going into 2012!  Thanks for reading!