Yesterday, the sun was shining, the wind was out of the south and it was at least 35 degrees. This may be hard for those of you south of the Mason-Dixon line, but that can mean one thing and one thing only. It's time to bust out the shorts. As you can see in the pic below, those things haven't seen the light of day for months. Keep in mind this picture is AFTER my 40 minute run so you can only imagine how pale they were BEFORE that sun exposure! After months of choosing between putting on the tights or heading to the gym for the dreadmill it was awesome to hit the trail and feel the breeze flowing through my hair (leg hair that is). I'm sure it will be short lived as we're getting 4-6 inches of snow tomorrow.
So, I'm almost done with week 7. Finishing my 2nd build cycle. "All" I have left is my 90 minute run tomorrow. Today I swam 2,400 yards and then hopped on the trainer for a 3 hour ride. I'd love to tell you how I completed my first full loop of the CDA course on the computrainer. Only I didn't. I'm ready for my recovery week.
2 weeks ago I rode for 2:45 and went 40.44 miles @ 171 watts with an average HR of 128 bpm. Today I rode for 3:00 and went 43.11 miles @ 170 watts with an average HR of 136 bpm. Those speeds are depressingly slow.
Lessons from today: 1. start working on ride nutrition now. I was pretty haphazard and took in 840 calories in 3 hours. Not enough! 2. if you don't have your fan adjusted, get off your bike and fix it.
That was yesterday (Friday). Today I got my 90 minute run in and despite the 5" of fresh snow it went pretty well. The path was plowed so I just had to deal with about 1/2 mile of loosely packed snow on the road to get there and back. It wasn't fast but I got the time in.
Looking forward to my massage on Monday and a scaled back training week. Not to mention tomorrow off - whoo hoo!
It's beginning to look like I'm really going to have to focus on my diet. I need to drop some pounds so the climbs aren't so tough.
Here's the video for the week. It's a long one but it shows some of the sights, sounds and emotions surrounding some amateurs from last year's Ironman CDA.
I interupt this previously scheduled training blog for . . . Life.
Outside of Ironman training, there's really only one thing going on in my life . . . Hockey, Hockey, Hockey. One or both of the kids has hockey six days a week it seems. The seasons are winding down - which is almost too bad because both kids have really improved their skating. Zman's coaches have said some great things about his effort and coachability. (Now if he would just clean his room!) JRose (like her brother) is most comfortable playing defense. She is convinced she is one of the best on her team which is VERY interesting. You go girl!
JRose trailing the puck.
Zman clearing the zone against the dreaded Johnson team. Last Sunday Zman had a 7:30 a.m. practice - following his 6:40 game the night before. We hit church and then what else? MORE HOCKEY. Santa brought Anne 4 tickets (8th row) to the Minnesota Wild v. Edmonton Oilers (for those of you south of Madison those are NHL teams). We got there early so the kids could watch the players come out of the tunnel.
The game went into a sudden death shootout and the Wild won. Zman said his stomache got butterflies in overtime and during the shootout - "like when the other team has a breakaway and I need to stop them" Guess he was into it.
Week 5 - or back to base building. First things first. I'd like to tip my hat to those of you who have kept an interesting blog going while training for an Ironman. I'm only up to 11 hours of training a week (did I really just say that) and I'm having trouble finding the time and energy to do much with this. Maybe as I get further into the training I'll have more interesting things occurring.
As I said in my last post. I went in and had Larry at The Fix calculate my LT threshold. With that information I can tailor my training on the bike to make sure I'm getting the most out of my time in the saddle. The test involves a structured warmup, a slow build to close to your max (then the blood draws start). A little glucose meter like device measures the lactic acid in you blood stream. You get a short recovery and then start back up. Slowly increasing workload until you find the point where your body is producing more acid than it can clear - your LT balance point or LT Threshold. Here's my graph:
The blue line is my build up to near max - 168 bpm. The green line shows my second buildup heartrate v. watts and the red curve shows the acid buildup. Note how steep it went up once I got past my threshold. That's not good.
The test showed my threshold is at 153 bpm. That number is fairly accurate I would say. It also showed that it is at 180 watts. That number is wrong and here's why:
Wednesday Bike: 1 hour 15 minutes, 185 average watts and average heartrate of 130 bpm with no muscle soreness.
Friday Bike: 2 hours 45 minutes, 171 average watts and heartrate of 128 bpm. NS Rob came over and rode the whole 2:45 with me - what a trooper!
I think we had the rolling resistance calibration below the minimum for the computrainer resulting in skewed watts figures. If my threshold was really 180 I should have been wiped after 1:15 at 185 watts.
We'll see how this week's rides go. I'll probably get tested after my next recovery week and see if we can get better numbers.
Totals for the week:
Swim 6,400 yards Bike 5 hours approx 75 miles test/course Run 2 hours 38 minutes 15.4 miles Yoga 2 hours
My swimming continues to progess - I had a long set of 1800 on Saturday. 500s of 8:03 (oops that's a little fast and going to hurt), 8:09 and 8:15. I think the speed work has been paying off. I should probably add a little to my running and see if that can improve too.
Here's this weeks video. I'm not sure which the Doc is more worried about - that I will end up in Scott's position or that the addiction will set in.
You can quit, and they don't care. . . but you, will always know.
So, it's been a while. I know. I've been in the pool, on the trainer or bundled up trudging over ice and slush. Or recovering.
Week 4 was about recovery. It started with trying to recover from our combined 80th birthday blowout on January 24. (The Doc and I turned 40 one week apart so we rented the back room of the Bulldog N.E. for apps and drinks with friends.) Thanks to Ramsey (and my inability to say no) I had 2 purple hooters after many beers. They are aptly named because hoot I did later that evening. Sunday was a scheduled rest day and I needed it.
The rest of the recovery week went well. Including a good 1 hr/20 min Brick with NS Rob.
Totals: Swim 4,750 Bike 4:15 or 75 miles Run 11.7 miles
On Monday of week 5 I had my lactate threshold calculated using the FACT method. I'll get a post with all the pretty graphs and charts as soon as I can.
After months of choosing between putting on the tights or heading to the gym for the dreadmill it was awesome to hit the trail and feel the breeze flowing through my hair (leg hair that is). I'm sure it will be short lived as we're getting 4-6 inches of snow tomorrow.
JRose trailing the puck.
Zman clearing the zone against the dreaded Johnson team. Last Sunday Zman had a 7:30 a.m. practice - following his 6:40 game the night before. We hit church and then what else? MORE HOCKEY. Santa brought Anne 4 tickets (8th row) to the Minnesota Wild v. Edmonton Oilers (for those of you south of Madison those are NHL teams). We got there early so the kids could watch the players come out of the tunnel.
The game went into a sudden death shootout and the Wild won. Zman said his stomache got butterflies in overtime and during the shootout - "like when the other team has a breakaway and I need to stop them" Guess he was into it.
The blue line is my build up to near max - 168 bpm. The green line shows my second buildup heartrate v. watts and the red curve shows the acid buildup. Note how steep it went up once I got past my threshold. That's not good.
