I did it again!

Wow did the taper pay off.  My total time was 35min faster than two years ago.  I was a little faster in each event and transition times.   I did not seed myself very well in the swim and found a lot of people blocking me from going as fast a would have liked.   The first lap of the bike was awesome.   Ran out of steam on the second lap.   The first 10K of the marathon was very hot....but once the clouds came in it cooled down.  I did not have any calf issues.....but did have some hamstring cramping for the last 10K.    I am very happy with my time.    I wont be doing an IM next year, but definately a volunteer.   Who knows....maybe this will be an every other year thing if my wife will let me.

2 weeks left

Holy Cow!   Welcome to Taper time.  Each workout is less in time.  Now comes the nerves.  Did I train enough, hard enough?  Have I thought about everything needed?  Now is the time of being paranoid about all aches and pains....ouch.. will that affect the race.   I swam in Lake Cda on Saturday....very windy.   It was like someone threw me into a washing machine for an hour cycle.  I had to skip a few breaths due to waves hit me on my breath cycles.  My bike goes to the shop for a tune up, new tires and tubes tomorrow..  I hope he can do a little magic and get me 1-2 mph faster on the course.   I road my bike 36 miles yesterday.  Flat but very windy.   Lots of animals on the Rail to Trails system.   Like a mini Yellowstone park.  No alcohol or carbonated beverages for the next two weeks.   Time to fix all of the little tears in my wet suit.   I need eat well, but not over do it as I dont need any extra weight on my bike seat.

Have a good week.

3 weeks to go

HA!  I am almost ready.   I had a good ride of 95 miles on Monday.  Still need to take in more liquids and Gels or I will be in trouble for the marathon.   What am I saying...the marathon is going to be trouble no matter how much I take in.   But I will survive.  Open Water Swims are going well.  Daytime temperatures are coming up so,  so will the lake temps.   My achilles tendons have been hurting for most of my training, so if they can hack one more week of full training, I will give them a rest in the up coming two weeks.   The last two weeks of training are called the Taper.  Less time and endurance in each sport.  Usually the work outs are shorter with portion of the workout more intense.  Hardly any time spent exercising on the last week.   I am starting to get excited and nervous.  I will take my bike to the shop next week for a pre race tune up.   Since getting the bike in January of 2011, I have put more than 8000 miles on it.

I have added up my miles and by the time I am done in 3 weeks I will have swam 96 miles, ran 600 miles, and biked 3,600 miles.

Asta la vista baby

4 weeks to go

Finished a good week last week.   Finally starting to lose a little weight.  My weight has been around 174 for most of my training.   Ideal body weight for my height is 155.    In the last week my weight has dropped to 165.  Had a nice ride with the family on the Hiawatha trail.   We road to the 1/2 way point.  From there they started back to the beginning and I went to the end.  I turned around and tried to catch them before they finished.   Was close but they beat me.  Good workout. 

This week has a lot of 90-100 min workouts.  Week 3 will be my last Big-ish week.   Hope to do one more long bike ride.  80-100miles.   Still need to fine tune my nutrition and hydration.   Hard to do this on my training rides, then on race day prepare for what they have to offer.  

Have a great week.

5 weeks to go

Last week I put in 16 hours of exercise.  This week has 18 planned.   I am still nervous.  My body aches with each long run and long ride.   I am able to complete 18 mile runs and 100 mile bikes in the same week, but there is no way I feel confident that I could do one back to back.   I am getting stronger in the swim and feel pretty confident there.   Weather is still making it hard to get bike rides in.   Cant believe it is supposed to snow tomorrow night.  Ick!  

State track is over.  Baseball is in full gear.   Christina is home from college and looking for work.   The 4H pigs have had their "weight-ins" and are now tagged.   Garden is in and growing.  Will have to protect it from the frost tomorrow.  

Stupid automobiles....one has ball joint problems, one's transmission died, and our spare wont start....what the heck.

More next week.

6 weeks to go

Last week was a blurrr.   So busy I didnt even get to blog.   My wife had surgery and everything went well.   Still has weeks of rest before she can resume normal activites.  My oldest is back from college and nice to have a full house again.  Track Districts and soon State track meets.  We moved the 4H piglets to their pen and they are adapting well. 
 The weather turned quite hot and so work outs were very hard.  My body has not adapted yet.    I am feeling aerobically very good and feel like I am almost in shape enough for the race.  My body on the other hand is scaring me.  My neck is quite stiff after my swim workouts and long bike rides.  My calves are always sore and on the verge of cramping on runs.   My achilles are sore after long bikes.   Sucks getting old.  
The next two week are some of my longest thus far and it is sad to see the rain in the forecast.   It is hard to get 100 mile bike rides in the rain.   I need to train my body on how 100 miles feels and it takes many 100 mile rides to build confidence.

Last weeks totals are:  140miles on the bike, 26 miles running, and 6 miles swimming.

8 weeks to go

OOOOOh no!   Winter is back. Say it is not so.    We have had snow on and off again for the last week.  I had to put the sweats and gloves back on.   It has snowed at the last two Highschool track meets.  Yuck.
In April I swam 16miles, Ran 57 miles, and road my bike 500 miles.  

Now the real work out begins.   My weekly hours will go from 12 hours to 18 hours over the next 4 weeks.   Almost all of my long rides will be 100 miles and my long runs will be over 13 miles.    My wife laughs at me as I whine after every long workout.   She says, "Who does this?  Who pays 600.00 dollars to inflict pain on themselves"   No mercy.   

On the lighter side we now have four piglets for 4H.   They are really cute and really stink.  They look really good and I hope the kids cant get a purple ribbon this year.

Cheers.

9 weeks to go!

Okay so here we go.  This will be the meat and potatoes of my training.   Most of the workouts to date are considered base training.   12 hour per week is a pretty standard base.   Now my workouts will progressively get longer for the next 6 weeks.  Almost every week will be a long ride of 5-6 hours.  Almost all long runs will be over 12 miles. 

Yesterday I rode the hilly portion of the IM course twice.  Very cold 30 degrees at the start.   Not sure what the windchill was at 19mph....burrrr.    The persistent wind was annoying.  Was able to do 80 miles, then fatigue, lack of calories and fluids set in.  I will have to do a better job on my nutrition and hydration on my 100 mile rides.   I have done four days in a row of workouts, so I will take today off and watch my kids run track.   Wednesday is my day to swim and the only time to squeeze it in is at 0500...

Starting on Friday I will start my open water swims.   Locally first and then start incorporating swims on lake coeur d alene.

Saturday I will be mixing things up.   I am on a triathlon team for a ski, ride and run mountain race.  I will be riding the bike down a muddy course.

Have a great weekend.

10 weeks left

Finally.  Our weather improved enough for me to get a long ride in.  I know 10 weeks sounds like a long way away, but it takes many 100 mile rides for a triathlete to feel comfortable at that distance.  It has been 2 years since I road my bike this many miles.  While it was sunny, the temperature was 32 degree.   The asphalt was dry.  The course was flat but on my way back I had to fight a 18mph head wind for 2 1/2 hours straight.  Nice to get the first long ride under my belt.   I would like to get at least 5 more 100mile rides in before race day.   The last few I will need to run a few miles afterwards to get my muscle memory going on running after a long ride.   I am ranging from 9-14 hours per week of exercise.  In May I should be 13-19 hours.  I have not lost any weight.   I have actually gained 5 lbs.  Must be all of the cookies

Ciao!

11 weeks left

This week I hope to get about 14 hours of training in.   Unfortunately rain, wind, and snow move back into the forecast.   Getting really hard to get any outdoor rides in.  Running in the rain and snow does not bother me.  Of course swimming is still indoors.   Rose lake is 45 degreess, and I wont venture out in it until the water temp is above 50.  I ran in some new shoes for an 11 mile run yeasterday, and my body is sore in different areas.   Like other triathletes, now that my training is 50% over I hope my body does not have any new problems.  There are horror stories of athletes breaking bones or having stress fractures that take them out of the race, which would be heart breaking.  

This week the kids are active with Track.  Sarahs 16th birthday is next week and I guess we will be having 16 girls overnight for a preparty.   Carolyn and I will be volunteering at the Highschool track meet.   We will be buying and picking up the kids Pig for 4H.    Will need to get medicated piglet food and heat lamps.  Our new puppies are fun, and a little high maintainence at times.  

Until next week

Cheers

Week 12

OMG.   If you subtract the last two weeks, which are taper weeks, I only have 10 weeks of training left.  Yikes.  This week is a recover week.   Only 8 hour planned.   I had a great work out Tuesday.  I did 6 hill repeats on my bike, each hill was 2 miles long and I went as fast as I could up the hills.  Then I ran 6 miles with 2, two mile hill repeats in the middle.  Recovered well.  

Today we are in Cannon Beach Oregon.  I ran 6.5 miles on the beach at low tide. Was fun.  We have been visiting Tide pools all day.  Lots of star fish and tide life.   Storms roll in soon so not sure what we will do for the rest of the week.   Hanging out is always good.  

I look forward to the next 10 weeks of brutal workouts, as I hope they will build my confidence that I can do this adventure one more time. 

Cheers

Week 13

This week went by like a blurr.......  I had one 4 1/2 hour ride and it really took me down.   I cant remember being so tired after long work outs two year ago.   My long run went well.   Swims going well.
Next week is a recovery week, and spring break.  Then the real work begins.

14 weeks left

This weeks total is supposed to be near 16 hours of exercise.   Well winter still has a grip on the Northwest and that makes it hard for a good long outdoor ride.   Still swimming 3-4 miles per week.  

On last monday I did an hour swim, hour bike, and hour run back to back.   Felt okay but a wierd fatigue came over me.  On Tueday I could only get an hour bike in because that fatigue came over me again.   I took Wednesday off. On Thursday I was to run 14 miles.  I have ran 10-12 miles each of the last 5 Thursdays.   During my run I became more and more fatigued and about mile 8 I had to stop and walk and eventually lie down.   I felt horrible.  Every muscle in my body was weak.  Even my tongue and jaw muscles.  I had to call my daughter to come and pick me up.    It took me about 4 hours to shake it off.  Being in the medical profession I started to worry about stuff like Multiple sclerosis, Heart attack, mini-stroke, encephalitis, lead toxicity....but then I remembered that rare stuff is really rare, and common stuff is really common.   

I had started Crestor a cholesterol medication a week earlier.  I have a genetically high level of bad cholesterol and exercise does not help it so I started the statin drug called crestor.   After an internet search, I found that middle aged atheletes who use statin drugs have a 200% increase in muscle fatigue and lactic acid build up.   Needless to say.....I am going off the crestor!!!!!!!!

More next week.

15 Weeks to go!

Hello out there!

I finally got outside to ride my bike last weekend and boy did it wear me down.   You can ride for hours on the indoor bike trainer, but it never compares to the road.    I rode one full loop on the Iron Man course.   I am definitely not in IM shape.    I am swimming about 4-5 miles in a pool per week.   Running about 20-25 miles per week.   Riding about 10 hours.   Each week my plan increases about 10% per sport, some weeks are more and some less.   

My designated long run days always attract a rain storm.   My last 5 long runs have been in the dark and in the rain.  Running by headlamps does not bother me....now the moose on the trail scare me!

Kids are getting ready for spring sports....Track, Baseball and 4H.   As all IM triathletes.....balance can be difficult.

Enjoy the Ride!

16 weeks left

Training is going well.   Really tired of training indoors on the bike.  Averaging about 90-100 miles on bike trainer per week.  Running 20-24 miles....mostly at night with headlamp.   Swimming about 3 miles per week.  

Weather is improving this weekend and hoping to get an outdoor ride in.

Have a great day.

Ironman 2013

Well here I go!  Yesterday I did  a 30 mins swim 15 mles bike and then a 3 mile run.  Felt good. Ifeel more confident this year, but am a little behind in training than in 2011.  Today is Superbowl Sunday so nothing planed.  Weather is sunny and 39 degrees.

Ironman 2013

Well scarey!

My 20 week plan starts next week.    I am working on about 6-7 hours of  run, bike, swim per week.
I had a mild set back of calf cramps/sprains.   I think this reoccuring problem is actually coming from my back.   Once again, not being well balance in a opposing muscle groups leads to injuries.   I am working on my abs 3 days per week to strengthen my spine.    Indoor biking is very difficult, but if I have an action packed movie to watch time passes by  faster.

More later!