The Barefoot Triathlete

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ― Mary Oliver - 41 minutes ago
.@rogershelps http://t.co/BTQsJ6tc Between this, CRTC ruling on throttling and Lakeshore West (lack of) connectivity you should be ashamed - 5 hours ago
More great advice! RT @TrainingPeaks: Want to dial in your race fuel strategy? Nicole of @neo_endurance tells you how: http://t.co/eXHhrSVi - 6 hours ago
100 days until @REV3TRI Knoxville Half Rev! Time to kick up the training a notch! - 22 hours ago
Congrats to @swimsense for hitting 100,000,000 Yards swam! I am good for 50,000 of those :) - http://t.co/DRfDaNf8 - 2 days ago

One Quarter

5 weeks of the 20 week program are in the can and I couldn’t be happier with the progress! 63 workouts complete for a total of 64-ish hours and no key (tempo or long) workouts missed. I did miss a few swims due to an ear infection and a few non-key (easy) workouts due to poor planning and life but so far so good!

A summary so far….

Swimming – 42,500M so far and my average pace has gone from 1:45/100M down to 1:38/100M and I am able to hold that pace for the full 3000M tempo swims now. Swims are longer now (3000-4000M) but I am comfortable with the distances. I am making a small change to the plan for the next few weeks dialing back to 3 swims a week, dropping the easy swim, as my schedule is getting a bit busier at work.
Cycling – 765KM so far but about 650KM of that on the trainer. The new trainer is different. It is harder than riding the roads. Where the old trainer had the same resistance no matter the speed this one gets harder as I get faster. I like it. I think my cycling will be even stronger in 2012 because of it. Thank you Kurt Kinetic!
Running – 174KM so far and some big improvements here. I am not a fast runner but I’m down to a 5:30/KM pace within my heart rate zone and fell comfortable at 5:00/KM. Next Sunday is my first running race of the year, an 8KM race, that will allow me to push the threshold and see what these legs can do. Can I hold 5:00/KM for 8KM? Can I go faster? I can’t wait to find out!
Strength – I love, love, love having a real gym to workout it. Proper equipment and a larger selection of weights are allowing me to lift more and get much stronger. I feel there is real progress based on what I could lift last year and the weights I am lifting now. I am curious how this translates into racing.
Weight – 170lbs down a total of 8lbs. Losing the post Ironman “recovery weight” has been great! I’ve gotten my eating under control and am keeping the calories in check and the quality of the calories is very high! I don’t have a target race weight but prefer to race in the 165-170lb range so I can’t complain where I am at now.

15 weeks until Knoxville and I am happy with the way training is going. 14 workouts a week is tough and even dropping that to 13 for a few weeks won’t be much different but it is working. While I am still with Mark Allen Online I went with the “Competitive” program (14 workouts a week) based on something I read from Joel Friel where he said there are big gains made in fitness going from 3 to 4 workouts per discipline, more so that going from 4-5 or more. It seems to be working as I am making faster progress than in the past.

Let’s just see if I can keep it up :)

Free Your Feet

As the (one and only?) barefoot triathlete I thought I’d share this info graphic I saw on the subject. While I’d never say that everyone should throw away their shoes and go barefoot I do think everyone should do some barefoot walking and/or slow jogging to strengthen there feet and supporting structure.

This info graphic was brought to you by DailyInfographic.com and XRayTechnicianSchools.net

Hot or Cold

So I received an email from Team TrainingPeaks about some beta features that have been released for testing. Living in a cold climate one that jumped out right away was the integration of a weather forecast. There is another new feature which I’ll get into later as I play with some data.

Click for larger view

It uses data from Weather Underground which I have been using for a while as I find it much more accurate that any other weather source since their data comes straight from the weather station. I’ve looked on other sites and TV and was told there was no wind only to ride for hours in a 40KM/hr windstorm. When it is released it will show up on the right hand side if you have the Weather pod as the first pod on your dashboard. I’d kind of like to see it across the bottom of the calendar and have suggested that but it does work well where it is placed now.

Not sure when it will go live but I’ll let you know on Twitter!

Poor Planning

Before I start I wanted to say congrats to the TrainingPeaks Team Manager Dan McIntosh for a smoking fast 2:03:45 time at the La Paz ITU Pan American Championships this past weekend! Also wishing fellow team member a speedy recovery after a tough crash this past weekend! Now….

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I am not sure who Antoine de Saint-Exupery was, other than a French dude from the 1900’s, but he (or she?) was bang on with that. I had a goal for a fourth consecutive perfect week of training but didn’t plan around work and life commitments properly and that goal soon because wishful thinking.

I thought I had a plan but I really didn’t think it out to well and it soon became evident that it wasn’t going to work. And it was only Monday. I regrouped, regrouped again and then tried to make the best of it. In the end I did hit all key workouts and ended up taking a rest day to refocus. It was the right thing and the weekend workouts were great. I spent some time planning this week properly and I know I have a solid plan for the next few weeks.

One adjustment I did make was swapping my first brick, a 3hr bike and 30 min run with next weeks long bike. I rode 2h 30min last night and will do the brick on Saturday. I spent the afternoon with Lisa at ROM and we got back later than expected. No biggie, it will get done.

One of the challenges of being a cold climate triathlete is excessive amounts of time on the trainer over the Winter months. To get around the boredom of 1-4 hour trainer rides I watch TV. With our basement renovation done and only a few minor cosmetic fixes left I splurged and bought a new TV and moved my AppleTV into the basement and have been riding indoors for a few weeks now. It is time to get caught up on all the movies I missed and the TV shows I love.

I typically watch TV shows as it allows me to mix it up and vary what I watch during the ride. Longer rides I’ll mix in a movie and typically go for the no brainer action movies. I tried watching a Packers game once but it was too hard to keep my heart rate in check with the ups and downs of the game. After yesterday’s stinker by the green and gold I was glad to be watching TV as they blew it. I’ve built up a great collection of shows and am working my way through them season by season. This Winters program guide includes:

Sons Of Anarchy Season 4 – Complete (Highly Recommended)
Dexter Season 6 – Complete
Covert Affairs Season 1 – Complete
Covert Affairs Season 2 – Pending
Homeland Season 1 – In Progress (Highly Recommended)
Justified Season 1 & 2 – Pending

I’ve also go a whole pile of movies I missed over the summer including Drive, Unknown and more.

And it is paying off! Looking back at the first month of training and I am seeing real progress in the swim, bike and run phases. I swam 35,000M in 4 weeks including 24,000M in two weeks which is a monthly best for me. My running is coming along and my cycling is improving as well. On to another successful week!

Rest Day

25 straight days, 500KM on the bike, 115KM running, 35KM swimming and 4h 15m strength training….

Early Mornings

A 20KM run on trails at 8am on a Sunday? Huh? Yeah I slept in, alarm didn’t go off as I set it for 6:30PM not AM. That is a sign my mind is smarter than I am. But this will be a week of early mornings. The last three perfect weeks of training are up against their first challenge and that is having to work at the office for the next week and a bit. I was given a harsh reminder of what this is like when my alarm went off at 6am this morning and I got out of bed to spend an hour on the trainer.

6am for a recovery ride on a trainer? There is a fine line between dedicated and obsessive compulsive.

But I’ve been enjoying the trainer, mostly because I haven’t had to do any long rides on it yet. A few weeks ago I did my 2.5 hour long ride outdoors as the weather was nice and this past week I did another 2.5 hours outdoors. Heck it was +7C and sunny on January 7th so how could I not? There was a good strong 30-40KM/hr North wind that made the ride home interesting but it was still better than riding the trainer.

Today was a sleepy day though and it was tough to get to the pool for today’s tempo swim. I really just wanted a nap but I really have no where to bump todays swim too so off I went. It was a hard 3000M but time flew by pretty quick. It was slower than normal and I had no strength the whole time but I got it done. By the end of the week I’ll be at 46,000M of swimming in 4 weeks and that includes missing 2 swims when my ear was jacked up. That boggles my mind. I used to struggle to get 6000M in a week and now I am consistently knocking out 12,000M weeks and enjoying it. Goes back to that dedicated vs. obsessive compulsive line again.

Still I can’t complain, three weeks of good eating and perfect training, I am down 6lbs and am seeing progress. There is still a long way to go but today I took the next step and booked a hotel for Rev3 Knoxville. I’ll be staying at the host hotel again and am starting to remember all the stops I made along the way. I can’t wait to find the Beef Jerky Unlimited shop along the interstate to pick up some of the best jerky around!

Fighting the Gorilla

“Training for an Ironman is like fighting a gorilla, you don’t quit when you are tired, you quit when the gorilla is tired” – Greg Henderson

Truer words have never been spoken. When in the midst of a training program you will be tired and this will affect your pace, your attitude, your desire. There is a difference between being tired and fatigue or overtraining syndrome. Over at the TrainingPeaks blog they have a great article titled “All About Overtraining” It is a great read. I blogged a while back about how I use TrainingPeaks to monitor for overtraining.

Basically if the purple line is low and the yellow line is high while the blue line is trending down you are overtraining. For example….

Training – Blue line trending up shows fitness gains

Overtraining – Low yellow and high purple equals high fatigue. Blue line trending down shows fitness decline.

See the difference? So yeah you will be tired, yeah you will have to suck it up and get out the door but I love the analysis from TrainingPeaks letting me know when I am nearing a state of overtraining allowing me to take some time to rest and recover before blowing up.

One Day at a Time

People often ask “how do you do it?” In fact that is a common question most people training for an Ironman (or anything really) get asked. The only answer is “one day at a time”.

You aren’t going to lose all 30 pounds in a week, you aren’t going to build the endurance to finish a marathon or an Ironman in a month and you aren’t going to become a Boston/Vegas/Kona qualifier in a few months either unless your name is Chrissie, Craig or Chris. Don’t worry what happened yesterday and don’t care what you are supposed to do tomorrow or the day after. Wake up, look at your schedule, execute and just like it says on the shampoo bottle; Wash, rinse, repeat.

Perfect

One hundred percent. Perfection. 14 out of 14. I wrote how I nailed week one of the training program last week but this week I kicked it up a notch. While week one was limited in swimming due to my previous ear infection, week two had no such limitations and I even worked around the gym hours to ensure I got in all four swims and got through all 12,000M of swimming!

That is my week as logged in Training Peaks. With the holidays over I can now balance things out a bit but I like the schedule as it stands. Now I have had “perfect” weeks before on my previous plan that I modified with three bike, three run, two weights and only two swims (I used to skip the third swim). But bumping the plan up to four workouts in each sport plus two weight sessions and not missing a beat got me excited.

This week was also the first long trainer ride of 2 hours. It took a bit to get going but I found an entertaining enough movie, Limitless, and the time went by quickly. All told the movie wasn’t that great but the perfect trainer movie, one where you can zone out for 10 minutes and not miss anything important. It was kind of fitting too as the story is about a guy who finds out he can do anything if he takes a little pill everyday. My little pill comes in the form of endorphins :)