week 29 and IRONMAN WEEK 30!! Woo!

I don't have much to say about week 29 and 30 other than I made it a pretty large drop in volume, probably more than was needed, but I just made sure I did small workouts here and there to make sure my body remembered how to swim, bike, and run. Did a mini brick after a 40 mile bike on the weekend and was good to go.

Now, on to the actual race!

Wake up _

I set my alarm for 4am to go down to the hotel lobby and get some breakfast. During check in they mentioned that breakfast would be open early for athletes and since the breakfast previous mornings had been pretty tasty, I figured their offerings would do. I was wrong. :( They failed to mention that the hot food items would not be available.. so my desire to eat some eggs and meat was not met. I had a small packet of cereal and half a bagel. I drank a full glass of 2% milk hoping that would help satiate the need for protein and then went back up to my room to eat half a peanut butter sandwich. I'm so glad I brought that extra food with us. I wasn't sure I had enough to eat, but I went it.

I felt a little dirty, so decided on a shower even though it was not part of the morning plan. But I had plenty of time. Showered, packed some cookies in my run/bike special needs bags and a sandwich in my bike special needs bag and closed them up ready to go.

I set an alarm for 5am for the second business of the morning, the TMI business, and drank an espresso doubleshot. 30 minutes I am good. I know it's stupid, but I practiced this many mornings discretely.. ;P Drank 20 oz of water. Done.

Throw all my swim stuff (wetsuit, cap, timing chip, goggles, booties, earplugs) in the morning clothes bag and set down to the lobby at 5:45am to find my aunt and dad waiting for me and Andy. We head to the car for a 1.5 mile drive down the road and hit a ton of traffic! I had to jump out of the car and walk to the transition area, Dad came with.

Swim: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/406544854

After getting lost multiple times in the transition area, dropping off my special needs bags, filling my bike bottle with Nuun (the only non-calorie drink for the day), I walked back to my Dad and finally figured out you had to get to the swim through transition... So I quickly put on my wetsuit, grabbed everything else in hand, gave my dad a real big hug, and off I went alone.. scary.

I got in line to get into the water. I sat down and put my swim booties on, put my swim cap on, and followed the herd. To get into the water, they mentioned you'd have to jump into it. I'm no good at jumping right in and was relieved to see a dock to the side. I sat down with them yelling on the speaker phone, "Get in the water now!! Get off the dock and swim in now!" over and over at all us not in the water yet. I swished my pre-baby shampoo'd goggles in the water, put them on, and eased in. The water was nice, just like the day before! Took me no time at all to acclimate and I swam over to the rest of the swimmers.

While waiting, someone must've started panicking, people started yelling for help like crazy minutes before the cannon with off. I tried to not let it get to me, my own thoughts consumed by the infamous IMAZ mass start washing machine! I didn't have to wait long until the visible clock on the side of the water ticked to 7:00:00, and the cannon went of, mass cheering started, and I put my head down and went to work. I can only say that the washing machine was nothing to write home about. I was easily able to continue my bilateral breathing, and if I hit someone or got hit, I moved.. no big deal! There was contact basically for the first half of the swim and the very end of the swim. Got to the steps, was pulled out, and wetsuit stripped! :o , then into transition where I changed into my bike clothes.

Bike: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/406544857

Overall, the bike was pretty unremarkable. I set out to average 17 mph while keeping my heartrate around 140. I was pleased to see that after the the first half of the first lap, my heartrate went from 158ish down to 138. It must've just been taking awhile from the swim. The only unknown at this point was how to get nutrition at the aid stations. You ride up, slow down some (but not a lot), and sorta yell out what you want while you're hand is out. The volunteers do the rest and stick what you need out so you can grab it. My first aid station was "Water!" and then "Perform!", and off I went. It was so easy that I relaxed into my ride and knew I was going to be okay.

The practiced nutrition plan was as follows: 1 bottle of Perform, then 1 bottle of water with a Gu sometime after I've consumed half the water, then back to Perform. Each segment was to be consumed within 45-60 minutes. I figured out quickly that each out and back for a loop was about 2 hours.. so I just made sure I consumed at least one segment per out or back.. if that makes sense. It was easy to follow in my mind. At mile 55 I had to stop and pee so I knew I was hydrated! At mile 66 I stopped at special needs because I had a bit of a hunger pang and settled in on some cookies my mom made for me! I didn't feel the need to eat the whole lunch I packed, so just the cookies.

My stops cost me about 10 minutes on the bike, but I really did hold a 17 mph average ultimately, so I was super happy! The wind was not really that bad, though I heard it could have been potentially worse. I felt that I had a headwind basically on laps 2 and 3, it got progressively worse and was glad to be off the bike before the wind had a chance to get real bad. Around mile 85 or so, my neck was sooo sooo sore.. and I could no longer hold aero position for very long on loop 3. I only went into aero to consume drink out of my aero bottle. I may have fallen behind on my nutrition at the end, but I wasn't too concerned since I didn't want to be slogged down when I started to run anyways.

Run: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/406544862

Coming off the bike I was able to find a friend of my aunts in the run gear bag area. She really helped me out like crazy.. I swear I had it in my mind that once I got off the bike, I was going to sit in the change tent for a bit.. but Dee had other plans and got me all changed and out the tent in under 7 minutes! I had a cookie in my bike jersey and I took that with me to start out the run.

The furthest I had ran in training was only 14.5 miles. Quite a few miles short of a marathon, I know. But what was done was done.. I could walk if I needed to. I had set my Garmin to set a pace for 13:00 min/mile pace and knew I could hold something to that for at least the first half of the run. The second half of the run was unknown. I quickly found out that is is hard to run through aid stations and manage to still get any liquid down your throat. So I had a timer to run 4 minutes, then walk 1 minute, but I also wound up walking the aid stations, so my pace was pretty slow.. much slower than 13 min miles. I really didn't care.. I was going to be an Ironman. :)

I got a good amount of time to see my family at around mile 12. My aunt's advice, "Keep eating until your stomach shuts down. Don't stop eating."  I don't think I really registered that eating would be such an issue until maybe miles 17 or 18 when I was just tired of it all. I tried eating everything... pretzels, chips, perform, coke, grapes, oranges.. what tasted good? Bananas and chicken broth... I know! What a terrible combination, but for some reason, it worked. Bananas, chicken broth, some water, next station would be water, perform, and coke. This sort of action got me all the way to mile 23 and I just didn't feel like eating, so I stuck to water.

Mile 20 was probably the worse! It just took forever! I got some advice around mile 22 to remember to breathe. I was pretty sure I WAS breathing, but when he said so, I found that it helped to breathe a little bit more than what was natural, it helped with the nausea I was experiencing when I thought about food. It was a matter of sticking to the 4 min run, 1 min walk plan. I wanted to not run a lot. But I said to myself that it was not what I wanted.. I would stop running when I couldn't. It was a good mantra and I would say that I stuck with my run plan pretty much throughout the entire race.

Once I hit mile 25ish, the rest of the run was downhill, which made coming into the finishers shute pretty easy. I was pretty positive that I was going to cry so hard! I spied Andy, Mom, Dad, and I came around the corner and I hear over the PA system:

"LISA SMITH ALHAMBRA CALIFORNIA, YOU. ARE. AN. IRONMAN!"

Post Race:

Pretty freakin' awesome. And not one tear shed (at least after the race, during the race I teared up so much!) Found Dee after I crossed and she had all the exciting energy for crossing the finish line. I was treated like someone special.. water, protein fortified chocolate milk, pizza, massage... Got a medal, t-shirt, and a hat. Plus the mylar blanket. I started to get cold after about 30 minutes or so, and it was time to go to the hotel.

At the room, I took a shower.. it felt great, except standing was becoming a large chore. Filled the bath and dumped some ice into it and took that torture for about 10 minutes. Crawled into bed and passed out pretty fast. Woke up at 3am, drank a chocolate milk and 3 tylenol, passed out again. Woke up at 6am to get some finishers gear, ate breakfast, slept again til lunch. Ate lunch, slept again til dinner.. then it was time to drive home.

I'm still not sure that it's even registered with me what I did. I am only extremely happy that I did what I did!

Week 28 - Sorta taper, but not really?

I haven't really decided if this week was supposed to be a taper week or not. It obviously has a drop in run/bike time, but it didn't really seem to have a break in intensity like the next two weeks do.

I took the opportunity to throw in a final open water swim to see how 2.4 miles felt swimming. I knew I needed to at least do the swim distance once so I could calm my mental nerves before race day. I also took the temp of the water (64 degs at the shore, it got considerably colder where I swam) and also wanted to try out my neoprene swim booties. I spent most of the swim making sure I didn't try too hard. I knew I still needed to run 2 hours later that day, and I wanted to get a complete prediction for what I might do on race day. Doing the swim in less than 1:19:00 makes me quite happy. I'll be even happier if I can draft off someone in Tempe. :P

The week was good, didn't completely miss any workouts, though I did cut a run pretty short. I meant to run around til dark, then finish on the treadmill. I made the mistake of looking at my phone after I got back and then started texting and got distracted. =/

Next up is making sure I have everything I need for the race and hope for an easy week of work on-call! yay taper!

Week 27 - Longest weekend run/rides accomplished!

As you can see, it was a little run light this week... I missed both run workouts planned during the week. I actually don't remember why I missed the run workout on Tuesday but Thursday's run was missed because I went to a Kings game and got off work too late to fit it in before hand. OH! I remember, I missed Tuesday because I decided to take my TT bike into the shop for a good clean up before the race! It was extremely worth it. The brakes are snappy, the gear shifting doesn't slip, and they even replaced the shifter knobs that the cats decided to chew on!

Running missed aside (which I actually think I needed because my leg was still a little sore), my long 3 hour run was alright. I stuck to the 4 min run : 1 min walk regiment, and pretty much held a 12:30 min/mile pace the entire time. What I am basically trying to accomplish come race day is be able to hold a steady pace on the run without having to think about pace, if that makes sense. The run is going to be more of a mental game for me and all I want to think about is eat/drink/run/walk. This last run only had me do 14.38 miles, and I have to say it worries me quite a bit on this somewhat low mileage. I read that at minimum two 15 mile runs are recommended in marathon training.. so maybe I'm not too far off.. but still. =/

My long bike was pretty good. It was a scheduled 6 hour bike and I wound up doing only 5:15 of it. 6 hours of moving time is a pretty long time, and I am just not sure you need to "do the distance" before race day to be ready for it. 87 miles in 5:15 on basically the same elevation profile in AZ is good in my opinion. I alternate [Gu & bottle of water] with [sports drink] each hour and felt good. I am not sure what to do around lunch time though.. I get hungry. I am wondering if I can get my mom to bake cookies and have some chips and a drink in my special needs bag and kind of have a real lunch? My stomach can tolerate it, I'm sure.

So, with that, the week that was supposed to be the highest volume, wound up being pretty much average. I think it was just important to get those long rides in and make sure everything was dialed in. At this point I just need to trust my training!

Week 26 - what a cruddy weekend

I know the graphic above isn't that clear, but for some reason Garmin seems to think I burned 18,508 calories this week. Despite this calorie burn, the scale seems to disagree and I did not lose 5 pounds :P

Actually, ever since my mock half ironman, my garmin's elevation data has been screwed up. From what I can gather in my research is that the barometer temperature inside the garmin is maxed out and reads something like 359 F, and the device thinks I'm at 63,000 ft all the time. Luckily, Strava has elevation correction so I've been using Strava a little more. I am pretty sure I can take corrected Strava data and then transfer it into Garmin, but it's a lot of hassle just to fix a few issues on the readings. I'll send the device in for fixin' after the race.

This weekend was such a bummer for my long workouts. Feel free to read ahead if you want, but it is a massive post. The TL;DR version is this: Long run sucked due to overheating in a new shirt. Long bike sucked due to blowing three tubes, having brake problems, requiring a full tire change. I'm starting to get a little worried that I haven't rode over 75 miles in my entire training so far. =/

Now for the long stories, no offense taken if you don't read my ramblings. I'm not a good story writer.

Saturday's long run was scheduled to be 2hr45min long. I wanted to try out my new DeSoto Skin Cooler shirt. I put the shirt on at the house and it felt generally "too warm", but I figured maybe the air outside would cool me down. Spoiler Alert: IT DIDN'T , I found that keeping the shirt wet made it awesome! But, I can only carry so much water with me, and that water is for drinking! Around mile 7, I found a water fountain and doused myself with water. This shirt is so awesome when wet! But, it dried up about 3 miles later, I had run out of water, and it was high 80's at least. I wound up having to call in and get picked up at the nearest 7-11, I got a gigantic Dr. Pepper to make me feel better. :) Ended the run short by about 15 minutes, I was out there for 2:45, but I spent 15 minutes of it just at stop lights! Next weekends run will be at a park or somewhere I won't have any stops like that. Undecided about wearing the shirt on Ironman day... it will be easy to keep it wet with aid stations every mile.

Well, the fun didn't stop there. The next day for the long bike ride, it didn't start off very well at all. It was scheduled to be 5hr30mins long. My Dad drove out here for some flat uninterrupted riding. Attach the bikes to the bike rack, and my tires needed a bit of air, so we filled them up and then drove to our starting point. When we got to our spot, I noticed my front tire was completely flat.

[Back up to last weekend, I did get a flat that managed to cut my tire, so during the week I changed both my tires to some I had lying around. One that was lying around, I had forgotten also got a gash in it and I had superglued it shut. I guess having it sit in the garage for some time made that seal become weak, but we didn't figure this out until two more tubes later.]

So.. 2nd tube gets put in and since my rims are deep, I have to use valve extenders.. yeah, the stupid extender broke onto the valve, and I lucked out I had a spare extender in my bike bag. Okay, so the 2nd tube finally gets pumped up and we get ready to go and I say, "Dad, I just don't have a good feeling about this ride.", no more than 2.5 seconds later my tube explodes! Dad gives me a *high five*. =/

Alright, so we take the tube out and feel around the inside of the tire and don't feel anything sharp, so we just assume we're pinching tubes on accident. 3rd tube is in, and I finish pumping it up with what's left of the CO2 cartridge and kinda just call it good even though it was a little low. We start to pedal off and I try my brakes... they don't catch! Wow.. now the brakes don't work! So we pedal back to the car for an allen wrench and fix up the brakes best we can. My front brake needs fixin'!

Back on our way again.. where we are immediately passed by a group of three, and once they pass us, they slow down and ride 3 wide! How annoying! We get pass them and then come upon 2 riders riding next to eachother who were chatting. A couple of yells of, "Hey coming up! On your left! HELLO!?!" I am assuming they did not speak English or something. sigh... this ride is really shaping up. Maybe about 30 feet ahead of those two guys is an intersection that was green when we rode up to it, so we crossed the street before the light turned red. Well, those two guys must've just been sheep because they entered in just like we did but for them the light was red! I turned around just in time to see them both fall in the middle of the road narrowly being missed by a giant, green SUV. I probably would have felt different if they got hit, but in my mind it was a small victory for their stupidity.

Now, we finish crossing the intersection, and I feel that I really do need to put more air in that tire. So, we stop, I hook up a CO2 and pump it up good. I ask my Dad, "Is it good?", he says Yes.. and then *BAM!* air shoots out right where that superglued spot was right into my face! If I wasn't wearing my sunglasses, I think the ride would have been over and a trip to the hospital for a busted eyeball would have been in order. SIIIIGGHHHH... we have one tube left, but at this point I think we were stupid enough for using 3 tubes already. We were going to call it a day at this point (a whole 1.8 miles in), but instead we called Andy to bring me a new tire, tube, and a floor pump. 15 minutes later, he delivers and we get ready to go.

After all that, the ride went without a hitch. I even had a guy draft off me at 20mph for a good 8 miles or so, and then he had to quit :D Only rode for a little more than 4 hours though, for a total of 70 miles. Oh, and my gears were slipping the whole time! Taking my bike in for a fix this week!

Week 25

Week 25 was pretty good to me. During the middle of the week was a car shopping week, so considering that takes a lot of time, I'm pretty happy with the amount of training I was still able to accomplish. Now that I have a car of my own again I can go the full duration of swim class! I have found that 40 minutes of swim is alright, but 80 mins of swim is waaaay better.

I haven't too much to say about this week because it just seemed rather ordinary I suppose. Our long bike ride was on saturday and it was a bit of an adventure. Dad had no nutrition with him other than 1 Gu, so we rode around and stopped at a bike shop which I guess threw him off our route and we wound up doing almost 5k feet of climbing that day and I'm not sure that was the plan. After the ride was done, I made it home in time to see the last 15 or so miles of Ironman Kona pro racers. The age groupers that stroll in around 10 hours was simply astounding.. I'd say 1 out of 4 needed major assistance off the finishing mat. They push themselves really hard!! If you tuned into the finishers at 13-14 hours it was a lot less frightening as those people didn't pass out at the end. Some did, but not nearly as many at the 10 hour guys.

My long run was another test of the run/walk method I plan to employ on race day. I tried a 4 min run; 1 min walk ratio. Probably the first time beyond 10 miles that I actually felt really good! I think that 4:1 is going to work on race day, I'm hesitant to try 3:1 ratio, but I guess you never know what will work until you try it. I'm just trying to stay around 12 min miles. I'm no runner, and I won't pretend to be!

The weekend workouts have finally reached a point where taking Monday completely off is completely necessary.

Week 24 - Good volume, santa ana winds.

First I'll start off with that I may have miscounted last week and it was week 23.. but I think I'm starting to lose my mind over all this counting.. So I THINK this is week 24...

At any rate, this week was def. more like it! Total training time of 12 hours 13 minutes, and this was a low swim week due to the lack of a vehicle to stay for the entire swim class. I went out to Alamitos Bay to swim and it was really windy so I got to swim in some chop. The chop was good practice, and I would have stayed longer (only 23 minutes), but I've been feeling this weird pain in my right leg lately. I would rate the pain as a 7/10 and it's this weird nerve pain in my groin. It sucks, and I think swimming is the aggravating exercise that does it.

The Santa Ana winds were pretty crazy all weekend, which brought in some high heat and some single digit humidity. Sunday's bike ride was interesting to say the least. But it also was HORRIBLE! Bleh! Okay, not horrible, but I hadn't felt sick on a bike ride in quite awhile. I picked the ride.. and I knew it had quite a bit of climbing, but I just needed something new. Riding all these flats lately, and it's been boring me to death. I had a camelbak type pack filled with 2.5 Liters of water, 2 bottles of Perform and 3 Gu to get through the planned 60 miles. It was good I brought all that water (even if my Dad did make fun of me!), my Dad refilled his water twice off my packed water :P, but daaaang when we got to mile 50 or so, it was just this wave of feeling like I was going to vomit and it wouldn't go away. We got almost to our planned destination and instead got picked up about 3 miles away and then got to eat lunch/dinner with my Mom and Andy! I got a gigantic full sugared coke and it was awesome!

Week 22 - is this all I really did all week?

I'm a bit disappointed in my totals for this week. I guess the excuse is that my motorcycle kinda died early in the week so I was a bit thrown off by not having a way to get to work or get to swim. My long bike for the week was sacked because well.. I just didn't feel like it. Which is a poor excuse, but riding for 5 hours by myself up and down the San Gabriel River Path just felt... unmotivating. So, instead I went to the LA County Fair! I think it was worth it. Mentally speaking, all the exercise is getting to me. But, then I look at how much I've been doing for the month of September, and I actually missed quite a few workouts, averaging about 8 hours a week only. =/

October is a new month and it is also the last full month of training! I am going to try real hard to just suck it up the whole month and do these next 5 weeks to the best of my ability. Right now I am having to deal with only be able to go to swim class for 50-60 minutes instead of the usual 80-90 minutes, but other than that, I am going to do the workouts. All should go back to normal when I get my motorcycle back. I am still getting over that barrier of not doing an entire workout just because I can't do the full 1.5 hours.. I need to say, "I can fit in 1 hour, so I'll do 1 hour. DONT SKIP!"

After 5 weeks, it is all taper until race day. So let's make this a great 5 weeks!

Pretend Half Ironman - Recap!

So, here is my pretend half ironman race that didn't quite turn into a full half ironman distance race. The biggest thing I learned from doing this race was:

SUNSCREEN

6:30:29 (ish)

SWIM:
My wetsuit is working perfectly. The water was cold, but Alamitos Bay is always cold. I would say that it was not as cold as I have experienced before. After maybe 4 minutes in the water, the temperature was not anything I focused on. I pretty much bilateral breathed the entire time, and sighted maybe every 4th-5th breath. I generally swim pretty straight. The only issue I had on the swim was that at some point a small tiny drop of water got into my right goggle eye piece and everytime I breathed to the right, I would get a stinging salt water into my eye. (It would continue to bother me the rest of the day, including right now) Pace: 1:57/100m or 1:47/100yd

BIKE:
For the bike, everything I have read usually goes, "You went too hard out on the bike.", "If you feel you going a good pace, you're going too fast." etc etc. So, I had it in my mind that I would make sure I made the bike complete cruiser mode. If at any time I felt I could go up one gear, I forced myself to NOT go up one gear even if I felt like the ride was too easy. I think it worked out well. Even going what I considered so slow, I was still doing about 18 mph for a good tick, which settled into about 17 mph for most of the ride. I caught a headwind between miles 30-40, met Andy at mile 40 where I got a refill of water/perform and ate a caffeinated GU. Made my way back down to Whittier Narrows for a total of 55.07 miles. Pace 16.6 mph

RUN:
First.. I knew the run was going to be the sucky part. I had it in my head going in that I would only run 2 hours maximum unless I was feeling absolutely wonderful, then I would finish the whole 13.1 miles for a real half ironman. Well, that would have been achieved much better had I remembered to pack sunscreen! I would say that the first 9 miles or so were pretty perfect. True.. I had no Gu (bad mix up with Andy and they wound up not available), but I did have a Snickers bar (at the 40 mile bike stop I asked if Andy could get me one!) Must remember to pack a frozen Snickers in special needs for my IM race! However, without proper nutrition and the fact I was turning into a total lobster, at mile 10 I was going to have to start walking on/off, I decided that it would be best to just call it a day. Another 40+ minutes in the sun wasn't doing me any good and I know I need to eat more than just a couple swigs of Perform every 1.5 miles. I can also say that I'm pretty certain that the marathon of the IM is going to suck major balls. Pace 12:24 mi/min

RECAP:
Nutrition -- I ate ~3 eggs and 1/2 cup cooked white rice for breakfast. I wanted to get in a glass of chocolate milk before we left, but I was just too full off my solid meals, I couldn't do it. On the bike I drank 2x20oz bottles of Perform from a mix that made it 200 cals per 20oz. I also drank 2x20oz of water and a Gu w caffeine @ mile 40 on the bike. At the end of the bike, I ate a 220 cal serving of Snickers bar. Once I started running, I would stop every lap and take 2 swigs of Perform and 2 swigs of water.. I'm guessing 1 oz per swig. It was not enough, so at mile 5 I had another 220 cal serving of Snickers. After that, the only thing I had was Perform and water, and my hunger got increasingly worse. Eat and drink more than that on the run next time!

They say to take your Half Ironman time, double it, then add 40 minutes to the total to make your predicted Ironman race time.. If we assume the last 3 miles could have been done in 45 minutes (lets be generous), that puts me at a 7:15 Half Ironman time... for an estimated Ironman time of 15:10! I'm really not so sure considering I know about half of the marathon run is going to be a run/walk situation... but then again, we are adding 40 minutes to the total time, maybe that accounts for it. I'd love to have a low 15 hour Ironman, but we'll see!

Week 19 & 20 - Heat waves and on-calls

Humid heat waves suuuuuuck. I can run/bike in hot, dry weather all day long, but this girl is just not used to there being any measurable amount of humidity when working out. Working out in the evenings was out of the question really, just too hot, too humid. So, I try to do a run or two in the mornings.. and those went "OK", but they were still pretty terrible. It should not be 80 degs at 7am :(

The A/C in the house has been out for some time now, so even my afternoon indoor bike rides were sacked. Then I got the idea to put the trainer upstairs next to the one-room a/c unit we bought for the bedroom. That helped!

I did one treadmill run for 1:15. I found out that it is incredibly easy to trick myself into doing something as torturous as 1:15 on a treadmill in a garage where it is still felt like 90 degs in. At 0:30 in, "Okay Lisa, just finish this one lap.", one lap goes by.. "Okay Lisa, just make it to 0:45 then quit.", get to 0:45.. "Okay Lisa, just finish this chapter." (reading Chrissie Wellington's book.. good?, eh. Interesting though!) finish the chapter... "Okay Lisa, just 10 mins of high intensity." finish 10 mins... "Okay Lisa, just 5 minutes left!" FINISH! .. LMAO..

Week 19's long bike ride went something like this: Drive out to my parents and arrive around 9am.. start getting ready and Dad and I go outside and give eachother this look like, "I'm not sure this is a good idea... 4 hours is a long time.." At which point we didn't really have to convince eachother to just sack the ride. Dad did suggest maybe getting in a 1 hour quickie.. but I have a really bad mentality if I can't get the whole workout in, I may as well just skip the whole thing. I need to work on that...

For week 20, I was on call for work and I actually got calls that sorta messed up my sleep and workout schedule.. plus it was still freakin hot! One run and one bike got interrupted by afternoon call outs. Tropical storm systems near baja California can please stay away for the next 10 weeks, yes? Week 20 ended what is called "Build Phase" for this training program.

I can already tell you that Week 21 is not going as planned, as I went on a mini vacation and didn't work out at all for basically 3-4 days... But, its time to really focus on my workouts and get a good 9.5 weeks in til race day. CRUNCH TIME! and Peak Phase!

Week18 ? ? Seriously?

Run Miles - 18.3
Bike Miles - 84.36
Swim Miles - 3.068

Total workout time - 11 hours 30 mins

I oddly don't have too much to say about this weeks happenings. I did miss a brick workout (well 2 brick workouts i guess), but I was still pretty beat up from my Oly race that I just wanted to sleep and sleep more.

I am pretty sure that I am no longer following the "Competitive" program in Be Iron Fit, and am now following some sort of mix of the Competitive and Intermediate program. The Intermediate program is exactly like the Competitive, except the 0:45/0:30 brick on Tuesday is only 0:45/0:15, and the easy spin on the long run, and the brick on the long bike are dropped.  I tend to still do 0:45/0:30 on Tues. and I tend to do the brick on the long bike half the time... so.. yeah, I'm sorta in the middle. Basically, I need to remind myself that even though I'm missing some of the workouts, I'm actually just missing the Competitive program aspect of this training, and I should still be okay come November!

Bike still feels fantastic, and the swim is coming along quite nicely. I still run slow as a turtle.. but I'm okay with this.

Feeling good, but really kinda waiting for this training to be over.. it's getting harder and harder to do the workouts. I just want to sit on the couch and do nothing!

Week 17 - My First Olympic Race!

Well, I suppose my way of putting in pictures makes everything just a tad too small to read, so I'll flesh it out better in words.

As you can see, week 17 was AGAIN, another light week. Partly due to my being lazy, and another part of me wanting to do real life things instead of putting the training first. I have it in my mind that now the olympic race is done, I will go back to my "No excuses" attitude and finish the last 13 weeks strong.

So, olympic distance race! Almost the right distance according to the garmin. It was a 1500m swim, a 19 mile bike, and a 6.4 mile run. My paces were approximately 2:16/100m (2:06/100yd), 17.1 mph bike, and a 10:44min/mile.  I really think I'm okay with these paces too! My goal was to go in there and go sub 3 hours on this race, and I did it all in 2:56:19! I wasn't the fastest (8th overall female), I also wasn't the slowest (out of 15 :P), so I'm happy with what I did!

I am pretty sore the day after the race. More sore than I would have expected. Mainly in my shoulders, back, and right glute. During the swim, I continue to feel the restriction on my arms in the wetsuit, but I also don't expect it to ever feel like I'm NOT wearing the suit. I need to do more open water swimming. The idea is to go every other weekend from here on out. The bike leg felt real good! The only issue I had was that the first 10 miles or so, it was hard to stay in aero position on my bike, and every hill felt like a mountain. I drank 20 oz of Perform and ate about half of a Powerbar (which are kinda gross, and I'll never eat again). The run leg was tough! It was a trail run, relatively flat with soft dirt from everyone else running on it. I kept a good pace considering the terrain I think. I drank water at every aid station, and then dumped some on my head. The water really helped my stomach feel better.. even though it didn't feel particularly upset, the water just felt good in my stomach.

Now its back to the grind for a few more weeks, then I do my mock half Ironman distance! Things are moving along quick. Only 3 more Build phase weeks, then into Peak phase (which by looking at it, looks just like build phase anyways...). Getting closer, and the Olympic was the longest tri I've done ever, and I'm feeling good.

Week 16 -

Running - ~22.21 miles
Cycling - ~60.32 miles
Swimming - ~5,225 yards

Still coming off from my cold this week. The post-congestion that has stuck around has made it kinda hard to do my higher intensity run/bikes, but I'm doing alright.

According to the "Competitive Program", I should have clocked in 14 hours total this week. 1) I cut my 1 hour bike on the 9th by 30 mins, I just wasn't feeling it =/,  2) I tend to ignore the easy spin that is asked of me on Saturdays, 3) I managed to cut 15 mins off the long bike AND I didn't want to run afterwards. bleh  4) I also skipped a swim because I planned to go to Long Beach saturday morning, but didn't feel like doing that either. :(

I think this week was still a recovery back from being sick and just a week of low motivation to complete everything I had my mind set on doing. Next week is low volume due to my Olympic race on Sunday! So, I am hoping that with a light week and a motivating race, I'll be able to jump back into the swing of things

Week 15 - Half way there and I got a cold

Oooo, look at how empty this week looks!

I had an amazing swim Wednesday morning, I broke 1:30/100yrds (1:25 and 1:28, to be exact), and was feeling pretty awesome about that. But, come maybe around 2pm that day, I started to feel pretty run down and my throat was scratchy, I decided that I would avoid the run that evening and just do it Thursday morning. Well, next morning rolls around and I could tell I wasn't just run down, I was actually kinda sick with something. :(

Somehow I was able to convince myself that I should rest on Friday as well. I did wake up Friday for swim, took a couple deep breaths and was like, "Nope, not happening!" and went back to bed. I felt not too shabby Friday evening, but still took the day off thinking that I should be all better come Saturday. I woke up Saturday with a bit of a scratchy throat and congestion, but figured it was just left overs of the cold.

Well... that turned out to be a bad idea. About 50 mins into my easy weekend run, I just felt terrible. Walk, jog, walk, jog, walk the rest of the way home, cut the run short. Sauntered into the shower, and came out looking pretty darn pale, no color in the lips, laid down on the bed for a little, then managed to get up to go to lunch. I couldn't stand for more than 5 minutes without feeling sick, but felt a little better after eating. The rest of the day was pretty much lay around until I had the energy to go to my niece's birthday party. Ducked out early because I started to feel run down again. Bleh. Took Sunday and Monday morning off. Woke up Monday without the scratchy throat and did my afternoon run.

What I learned is that I should have just waited! I gained nothing from going for my run on Saturday. If anything I set myself back a day or two. And when I ran on Monday, I took it somewhat easy, but in no way did I actually lose ANY fitness!

Getting sick was pretty much one of the top things I did not want to happen during my training, so when I got this cold, I had some moments of panic and dread, but really I don't think I should have worried. I've been working hard at this, and 5 days off shouldn't set me back, and it doesn't appear it has. So this is all good!

Week 14 - Broke 12 Hours in One Week!

Run miles - 21.55
Bike miles - 67.11
Swim yards - 7,600

Total time - 12:10:32 (And this is missing out on 1:15 workout on Tuesday!)

Yeah, so I kinda skipped a workout this week. I skipped Tuesday's small brick workout of 0:45 bike/0:30 run. I was really having a tough time at the beginning of the week with motivation (which I think is more evident in my Week 13 post). There are a few reasons I can think of for the poor attitude; being female thus dealing with pesky hormones is one. But, I think I also have to just sit and remind myself of what I'm doing.. of course I'm tired, I workout 11+ hours a week. And those 11 hours also have "preparation time" as well. I would say that it takes at least 30 minutes to get ready for each workout, so lets add on 4.5 hours a week to just getting all my stuff together. And these hours are only going to pile on, I should be maxing out at 19ish hours at the cap!

I come from a world where I used to eat dinner before 6pm, I always joked I'm already prepared for the cheap dinners at 4pm and eating with the older, retired folk. Now, I rarely eat dinner before 8pm. I now try to eat something for breakfast, which I never really bothered to do before. I drink nearly a gallon of milk a week.. I had cut dairy except hard cheeses before.

I've put on about 4 pounds of weight, still not sure where it went, as my arms and legs are more chiseled than I ever seen them, and I think I have a little 2-pack forming on my abs. My clothes fit the same. But, I just don't think its possible for a woman to put on 4 pounds of muscle in 3 months..

Have I really been at this for three months (and one week)? Holy toledo! Almost halfway done!

Week 13 - Looks like I'm hungry again

Totals:
Run : 19.67 miles + 15 mins treadmill
Bike: 76.05 miles (estimation since I think trainerroad makes my speed like 3 mph slower than outside)
Swim: 5,100 yards

This is my 3rd week of Build phase and I am not sure what to really think anymore. It was easy just getting up, going for a run or bike at an easy zone 2 heart rate pace, not really having to think about the workout exactly, I just knew I was getting better and the long run/bike was pretty much cake. Three weeks into doing zone 4 intervals in the middle of my easy zone 2 pace is almost leaving me with certain DREAD when I have to go for a run/bike.

Just yesterday I had my afternoon run and I had to do TWO 4.5 min intervals in a run where my legs just did not want to move fast enough to even bring me into zone 2. My legs were dead from Sunday's 50mile/2.8mile brick workout, I think.

After awhile, I was thinking that I am not sure I want to do this anymore. I mean, I know I WILL do it, I'm not going to quit, but damn this training stuff is hard to do every.single.day. (except Thursday :P) I try to go to sleep early, but can't seem to stay asleep, I wake up feeling groggy, hungry, sore, tired. Did I mention hungry? Today I ate a 1/2 pound cheeseburger and half a load of thick fries, gah! AND I WASN'T EVEN FULL. I would really like to go back to eating primal, but I just am not sure I could hack it. I am going to try to up my protein intake and see if that helps with the hunger and soreness.

Weeks 11 and 12 - Intro to Building!

In general, I feel pretty good about these few build workouts. Of course, all I have done so far is about 5 mins of Z4 heart rate per running and biking workouts. When I do those 5 minutes though... man am I tired! I always look at my watch way too often and when I do it's usually like, "3 MINUTES LEFT!? MAKE IT STOP I'M GONNA DIE!", ... I never die though. :P

The need for sleep has crept back up to needing a little more than usual, hunger has stayed pretty stable, though I am being more diligent on drinking a bit of chocolate milk after workouts. I really think that chocolate milk thing really does help with the recovery, and I find it way more tasty than choking down protein powder shakes.

Here's hoping to getting faster as I continue to build more endurance. My running really needs to be better, at this point I'm looking at like 11:30 min/mile on race day, and I'd like that to be maybe 10:30. Honestly though, all I want to do is finish! Time goals are just goals and not going to be disappointed if I fall short on speed.

Recap:

Week 11 was front loaded with me still being on vacation up in Oregon. Things got shuffled around and week 10's long bicycle ride got moved to Monday. So Monday and the following Sunday were bike rides, making my totals for the week a lot higher than week 10. Also, my tension bolt on my Kurt Kinetic Road Machine decided to strip and break! Luckily Kurtkinetic has some pretty awesome customer service (and they fully admit the tension bolt strips), and replaced it with their new tension bolt system! Shipped and everything for free! The only problem was that I was bummed I missed a bike workout on Friday. :( Then I had to push Week 12's Tuesday workout to Thursday. The bolt showed up on Wednesday!

I'm actually surprised that Week 12 worked out (pun?) as well as it did. I was on call for work, but I only got one call on Tuesday evening, so it didn't even interfere with my sleep that much (only lost about 2 hours), I still made all my workouts minus Sunday's long bike ride. Originally scheduled to be a 2.5 outdoor ride with 0:15 min run brick, I just did 1.5 hours on the indoor trainer and skipped the brick aspect of it all. I feel a little guilty about it.. but guilt should not drive my workouts, otherwise all this training will become more like a chore and less about completing something much larger than myself.

Base Phase DONE, with Family!

Major milestone hit this week by finishing the first phase of my training. Base phase was actually pretty easy, so I am interested to see what the next few weeks bring.

What made this week even more special was being able to do the last four workouts with my family. I shuffled a few workouts around to accommodate my cousin's wedding and everything worked out great! Mostly my bike rides were with my aunt and Dad, and my running was accompanied by my aunt as well. A small group of us would get ready to either bike, run, walk, jog, etc, and then we would head off at our respective paces. It really wasn't a big deal about breaking away from the pack, but what was important was us all doing something active, and returning to the vacation rental to all say what we accomplished.

I did find it a little odd having company on my runs at first. My aunt slowed down to my pace and we held it quite nicely and even my niece stuck with us for a mile! 1 hour 30 mins running was the longest run so far in the program and it went by quick! Having someone to chat with was pretty awesome, and I got to pick her brain about everything Ironman. (2 time finisher, yeah, she's pretty cool)

You don't see this weeks long bike ride since I did shuffle things around and you won't see it til next week Monday, but it was just shy of 3 hours long.

We will be packing it up tomorrow morning to head back home, but I gotta say that this vacation was pretty sweet and it couldn't have come at a better time in my training program. Finishing a milestone with so many around just made it mean something that much more.

Week 9! Base Phase almost done (and mental breakdown #1)

Week 9 was a swim short due to some emergency room visit for the husband and then another for a visit to the immigration peeps. Andy is fine and we passed our interview so missing 1 out of 2 swims for the week was well worth it!

I am still in awe that my short runs during the week are now over 5 miles each time. And with that I'm even more amazed that I'm clearing about 18 miles a week. Being only week 9, I know what is to come soon... which is adding another run into the mix, I'm sure I will be running over 25 miles a week soon.

This week also marked my first total mental breakdown during this training process. I have read that sometimes all this training can cause mood swings, anger, depression, etc. But I just wasn't quite sure if I would fall victim to it because I am generally an even-keeled person who doesn't let things get to her very often. At least, so I've been told! But.. yeah, it happened. I won't go into specifics, but I was just super easily irritated and I didn't know when to just STOP, and the irritation turned into anger, and then that anger made me just feel like knocking my bike over and then I kicked the vacuum that decided to overheat. =/  I never get physical like that with stuff (and I really do mean never), this being the first time,  I'm actually pretty embarrassed even if Andy was the only one who saw. Eventually I blurted out, "I don't know why I'm mad, but I'm really mad!" and then I went and sobbed in the middle of the floor. I lied there for a little bit and relaxed. Felt better and made sure I sat and took it easy at ANY time I started to feel overwhelmed. I went for my run workout that day, and then chilled with some booze... :)

Actually.. now that I've put the week together and how it went with the ER, the interview, and whatnot.. maybe the breakdown makes sense.. like I guess I was more stressed than I thought? Hmm.

Going into week 10 feeling pretty good though I have to admit sometimes I just wish there were two days off in a row let alone maybe two days off in a week..

Week 8 - Recovery weeks seem more difficult

This week was what we would call a "recovery week", which means that basically the week 8 is similar to week 6... I think. This is supposed to give my body a little break before the training program tacks on a little bit more volume for weeks 9 and 10.

What I am finding with these recovery weeks, is that I seem to be much less motivated for the workouts that for the next weeks. I am not sure if that is because I'm having carryover from the weeks prior and my body needs this lower volume for rest or if the lower volume is just unmotivating.

Unmotivating so much, that come Wednesday evening, I just couldn't seem to be bothered with my 60 minute run (a long work day might have had something to do with that too), but instead I just opted to get some dinner and then do the planned run on Thursday morning instead. Yeah, it took away my rest day, but I still got 36 hours of rest in between Thursdays morning run and Fridays bike workout. However, doing this, I learned that my body is really not primed to run in the morning. The legs/knees just felt sore, speed was low, and heartrate wouldn't leave Zone 1 so I just felt lazy, I didn't want to run any faster, and then I cut the darn run short by 9 minutes!

Still feeling pretty good overall though. I've only missed two workouts (1 swim, 1 bike) in the 8 weeks so far. 22 weeks to go!

Week 7 - Training away from home

This week I was away from home and up in Hell Redding, CA where there was record breaking triple digit heat. It were hot!

The workout week seems a little light due to the lack of swimming. It is a shame really since I did purchase some stationary swim gear Aqua Sphere Stationary Swimmer, which I did use at the hotel on  Sunday (week 6), however I managed to forget my earplugs. :(  I really have to swim with earplugs otherwise my ears feel like they are going to explode and I kinda get an earache for about 12 hours and a risk to an ear infection. When I tested it out on Sunday, I swam for 30 minutes and my ears just couldn't take it anymore and I slept pretty terrible. It was hard to be motivated and do another swim during the week, so I just didn't bother.

I also missed out on a 60 minute, low intensity (Z1) 100+ cadence technique ride. The day I planned to do this was the same day I had to fully suit up in hazardous chemical protective equipment with a respirator and SCBA tank strapped to my back in TRIPLE DIGIT HEAT. By the time I got back to the hotel, I really could not be arsed to do that workout on a recumbent stationary trainer where the left foot strap was broken anyways.

The week was mostly filled with my appetite being upset (not getting hungry for dinner and eating at 9:30pm most nights), sleeping pretty late (after midnight, due to eating dinner so late), and eating really terrible (due to Redding have two types of food, burgers or Mexican).

I am really proud of myself for breaking the 1 hour run mark twice this week especially in the massive heat! I hope to do a mid-week post showcasing the Sacramento River Trail/Sundial Bridge before I forget about it. Really great running trail!

Week 6 - First outdoor, long ride with the tri bike

Week 6 is done. (with a swim on Sunday that is going towards week 7)

This week's milestone was taking the tri bike out for the first time! Now, since the first week of training, I have been using the tri bike on the indoor trainer for my brick workouts and my 100+ cadence technique workouts. These usually fell on Tuesdays and Fridays.

This week, however, my Dad came out to my neck of the woods on Saturday, which means we usually ride the San Gabriel River Path. We usually start at iconic area #3 (see the link), and either head north or south. Well, Saturday was shaping up to be blazing hot, so we headed south to Long Beach. Which is awesome we get to see the Queen Mary and whatnot. The path is a multi-use path with no vehicular traffic and no climbing, so it was perfect for testing the tri bike out.

I was a bit nervous, with my Dad out, there was a risk we'd get like 10 miles in and I'd be so uncomfortable we'd have to turn around and dredge back to the car. I am happy to report that was not the case, and I was able to do 50 miles with minimal discomfort for maybe the last 10 miles or so. MY NECK/SHOULDERS GOT TIRED! The soreness went away after 2 days though. So here I sit Monday evening, and I feel pretty good (especially after a 1h15m run in 100 F heat)

Weeks 4 & 5 - foot pain :(

Week 4 was a recovery week, and I guess it sorta felt like recovery. Mostly I recovered from my insane hunger that could not be satiated. I figured going into week 5 I would start to get hungry again but it just hasn't happened. The only thing that has happened, is that I seem to have developed a flair up of plantar fasciitis in my left foot. I think it has something to do with June 19 and 20 where I ran two days in a row. I would say that I pretty much knew after the run on the 20th that Wednesday's run was going to be a little painful. I had to stop and massage/stretch almost every 10-15 minutes. Come Sunday's run, I put a lot of time into foam rolling, massage, and stretch before I went out AND I also put my 'stability wedge' back into my left shoe.

Not only was I feeling the PF, but I also got this weird lump feel in the ball of my foot and toe numbness, which I can only diagnose as Morton's Neuroma. Which is another reason I put the stability wedge back into my shoe. That wedge seems to put the MN on the back burner, and it makes the PF juuuuust noticeable enough that still worry about it, but I am hoping it will heal on it's own while I continue to run. Ibuprofen and ice and comfy shoes everywhere I go until it's healed up. 

I also haven't been going to Friday swim. I am not too sure why, I think it has something to do with Thursday's rest day and it just not being enough rest? I will try to go this week since the following week I am out of town and will have no opportunity to swim unless I swim at the hotel pool or something.

Rest days are a whole other thought since Thursday's tend to be the one day out of the week I just get extremely grumpy and it usually bleeds into Friday until I do my workout. I have to wonder if my body is so used to the endorphins or whatever I get from the workout, and the rest day lets those levels go too low and then I get grumpy. I will have to do some Googlin'!

Week 3

I don't have too much to report on this week, except it's the most voluminous week so far. Which isn't saying too much considering this is only week 3! Sorry for the poor picture quality of the Mon-Sun week. Just 9 hours and 20 minutes of working out and supposedly 4,267 calories!

Saturday was cool. I skipped Friday's optional swim workout for an optional Alamitos Bay swim. I wanted to see how I was doing with swimming distances and also swimming in my wetsuit. The first time I tried it on, it was extremely tight (which gets looser as you fill your suit with water), and my arms would just fatigue like crazy. I read some tips online about where places of the suit get sorta bunched up and where you need to move those bunches in order to free up some shoulder room. I took all the tips and set out to swim for 1 mile in 1 hour, that was my goal. I made 1 mile swim in 35 minutes with four rest breaks! What the crap.. all this swimming is totally paying off. I'm not sure why I'm too surprised about 1 mile being easy since I swim over a mile in master's class, but this time in a wetsuit and open water, YEAH!

Saturday's swim was about the only thing 'cool' about the weekend. Record breaking heat of 100+ temperatures everywhere I worked out. So it was about 96 degs for my 1 hour jaunt saturday afternoon around 4pm, and then it was about 98 degs for my 1:45 bicycle ride with my Dad on sunday. Sunday was Mommie's Day, so after the ride we went out to the coast for dinner and the temperature was much more amenable.

Currently on my Rest Day of week 4, which is a recovery week. I'll be posting about that hopefully on Sunday. :) Preview: Not nearly as hungry as last week.

The three states

It's midweek of Week 3, everything is going pretty well. Today is Friday, so yesterday was a full day of rest, yay! So, what I've noticed is that my body really is only up to feeling/doing three separate things:

Sleeping----HUNGER----Training

Basically when I am awake, I'm always so freaking hungry. I cannot eat enough food to make me stop being hungry, not just regular hungry, I'm STARVING. I eat dinner and then I'm hungry again 2 hours later. I go to sleep hungry, wake up in the middle of the night hungry, wake up hungry. It's almost frustrating. According to my garmin data, I burn about 4000 calories from working out, I am basically negating two full days of eating every week with what I'm doing. Top that with trying to stay relatively gluten free (paleo with rice and dessert :P), I think I need to eat more potatoes!

I'm also very sleepy. Seems like every since last Friday on the drive to Tulare I have not been able to sleep enough to stop being really sleepy during the day. I've had 10 hour nights of sleep, and wake up sleepy! Today doesn't really count because I was out from midnight to 2:15am for work related ventures, so yea.. I'm pretty tired today. But, this is okay because after my bike ride after work, it's time for the Kings hockey game, and each time I sleep through the game, THEY WIN. (Now that I got it down in writing, I'll probably not fall asleep, or they'll lose while I nap) But, yes.. sleepy, and it's only Week 3!

Training is going well. I have not had any issues with just absolute dread of doing a workout, I'm actually enjoying this, though I know a lot of attitude can change in the next 27.5 weeks.

Next week is the real test. I'm on call 24/7 for work AND I'll need to do my training. Glad Week 4 is a recovery week, which cuts back on workouts, but does not eliminate them.

Week 2

Week 2 is in the books and my biggest lesson this week has been to take it easy on the extra curricular (read: social life) :( It kinda sucks to have to say that, but I shuffled my workouts and front-loaded the week so I could drive out to Tulare for some cool explosives training class. It was totally worth it for the class, but I know that it really takes a lot of energy to do what I did.

Notably, moving my 'long' 60 minute run to Wednesday, which included a morning swim, and then waking early on Thursday to fit in a 45 min run. A little too packed of running in a short time, along with a bike on Thursday after going out to dinner with the family, and then waking up early for a Friday swim. That was all capped off with a 3 hour drive to Tulare after 8 hours of work.

Speaking of Thursdays early bike, I am having trouble following the program. The training calls for Zone 1 heart rate training at a 100+ cadence on the bike. Even in the lowest gear of my bicycle, after about 4-6 minutes, my heartrate pops over Zone 1. Zone 1 for me is 121-139 bpm. Either I have really low endurance at high cadence or I have calculated my max heartrate for the bike wrong. I also find it kinda uncomfortable in the saddle when I have to peddle so fast without resistance. I may raise my saddle up a tad and see if that helps.

Thursday bike was also supposed to be 30 minutes long, but doing the math I see I only did 21 minutes. Basically, after 13 mins, TrainerRoad decided to crash at some undetermined time and I needed to stop peddling to get it up and running again. During this time I was also getting really irritated at the evening news because they were covering a huge fire constantly, do you have any idea how boring it is to do an indoor bike ride and just watch fire on TV? About as boring as watching the yule log on KCAL9 every Christmas... except this time you have no music and no presents. Its boring!!

So, crashed indoor trainer program, uncomfortable saddle parts, and annoying TV made me quit early by what I think is more like 5-6 mins short.

WEEK 2 DONE!

Week 1 - 29 weeks to go!

Well, here is what week 1 looks like when it's all said and done. The week is Monday thru Sunday (the weekend includes Sunday, after all right!?).

Base phase of Be Iron Fit actually only calls for 2 swim sessions a week and only a 60 min bike ride on Sunday, but swimming is kinda nice and there's no way I can convince my Dad to only go for a 1 hour bike ride on the weekend. What sucks most is that I forgot my Garmin on Sunday's ride. :(

I would say that, so far, things are going really well. I feel pretty good, and I have a mentality that no workout is negotiable. I don't even let myself try to talk myself out of a workout. Workouts come first before grocery shopping, dinner plans, or whatever other chores there may be.

Not much else to report other than I got some new shoes! Now I have two pairs of Altra Provisioness that I will rotate throughout the weeks, I heard somewhere that's what the cool runner types do...

Week 1 Jitters

Today is Friday, and I sit here realizing I only have two days until I officially start my training on Monday. I don't know what it is, but a week ago I was ready to start right then, but now that it's really going to start, I feel almost unmotivated. Don't take it the wrong way though, just because I 'feel' unmotivated right now, doesn't mean that in two days I'll just say, 'forget it', and sleep in and do no training.

I wonder if the Baker 2 Vegas Relay had anything to do with it. When it was over, my legs were pretty tired, so it was nice to have a few days off. But then again, I went to the pool at 6am on that Monday and felt great. But, I had it in my mind that I should really take this last week off so I managed to do no other workouts after Monday. So, here I sit on Friday.. just wondering if I made the mistake of letting my momentum disintegrate.

Sunday I am going to a Meetup group for ocean swimmers so I can practice my wetsuit swimming. I find my body gets so damn tired when I swim in a wetsuit. With the person there to give tips about swimming, I am also hoping he will be able to give me some tips on whether I have the wrong size suit, or if I just don't put it on correctly.

I hope Sunday's swim makes me feel more motivated to start this 30 week journey.

Data Collecting

Maybe some wise-man out there once said, "Nothing is worth doing without data." And maybe he was right. I fully concur though, I LOVE DATA. So I thought today I could talk a little bit about the most important feature for me on my Garmin 910xt is the heartrate monitor.

If you don't know much about the Garmin line of products, the 910xt is a GPS watch made for triathlon in mind. It is waterproof and allows you to pick 4 different sports (Swim, Bike, Run, Multisport).

Anyhow, back to heartrate. It's been a bit of trial and error with me, but I've been using heartrate training for my running consistently for about 5 months now. I started using it for the Disney Half Marathon after the run-walk-run Galloway method did not work for me. I think running too fast just killed my leg.

In December 2012, my Zone 2 running was approximately at 13:30 min/mile pace.

Currently, April 2013, my Zone 2 running is approximately at 12:15 min/mile pace.

In about 4-5 months, I have knocked 1:15 mins off my mile pace, presumably at the same exact effort over the course of those 5 months! I think that heartrate training has proven to be extremely useful and I am glad that my Ironman training plan is based on heartrate zones.

For races, I turn off the heartrate alerts on my Garmin and just run with 'perceived effort', going how fast I want to go. Which has turned me into a 10 min/mile in a 10k (65 degs F), but just recently I ran 7.5 miles in 82 degs F at 10:18 min/miles. I am pretty sure I could crush my 10k time in the cooler temperatures now.

Week 0 - Before the madness begins

It's week zero. Or rather -0.5 if we're being technical. I start my Ironman training in 12 days. This is really just to document this event, and if you are reading and want to play along, that's cool too. I hope to post at least once a week, maybe more. And I also hope to not write huge posts that are just too long to keep up with.

The Plan: Be Iron Fit by Don Fink -- Competitive Program
This book lays it out pretty easy, 10 weeks Base Phase, 10 weeks Build Phase, 10 weeks Peak Phase. It starts at 6 hours/wk and will peak at 20 hours/wk, when it will cut back and it's then time to race! I know it's called the "competitive program", but as you'll see by my race times below, I ain't winnin' no races any time soon. I just want to be well prepared and finish in time!

Past Races (Where I'm Comin' From)
Hansen Dam Sprint Tri 2009 - 2:13:31
Bonelli Park Turkey Tri 2009 - something horrible, we don't talk about it.
Hansen Dam Sprint Tri 2010 - 1:46:24
Disney Half Marathon - 2:55:23
Griffith Park Rocks 10k - 1:02:00
Lake Havasu Sprint Tri 2013 - DNF
Bonelli Park Sprint Tri 2013 - 1:51:48

Ironman Race:
Ironman Arizona
Location: Tempe
Date: November 17th, 2013