| 2012 Training Goals | ||||
| Total HRS | 550 | |||
| Swim | 75 | hours | 135,000 | yards |
| Bike | 260 | hours | 3640 | miles |
| Run | 165 | hours | 740 | miles |
| Strength | 50 | hours | ||
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| Training Totals | ||||||
| 2011 | 2010 | |||||
| Dist | Hours | Avg Pace | Dist | Hours | Avg Pace | |
| Swim | 81311 | 30 | 2:11/100 yd | 96773 | 34 | 2:05/100 yd |
| Bike | 2426 | 169 | 14.3 mph | 1791 | 136 | 13.19 mph |
| Run | 617 | 138 | 13:27 per mile | 462 | 114 | 14:51 per mile |
| Strength | 11 | 13 min/week | 20 | 22 min/week | ||
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It's so freaking hot now. I'm a big guy and I've never done well in extreme heat even when I was in good shape. But now carrying 75 extra pounds its a suffer feast when the humidity levels get above 70%. Tonight was case in point. 4 mile easy run after an hour easy on the bike this morning. Took salt pill and kept my HR down but my perceived effort was through the roof. I walked for the first time during a run in several months. See the lovely pic for a demo of the humidity around these parts. Oh and tomorrow is a balmy 97!
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Sent from my iPhone 4
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My 10 miler will though. I'm fighting through some issues that are common I think for first timers completing a half marathon program. ITB irritation, lower back pain. Shin splints. In other words I need to strengthen my core and butt. I used to lift all the time but now not so much. Need to get lifting again. Movement prep and prehab too.
Good news if the rest of the year goes as planned, I'll have completed close to 300 hours of exercise. Thanks to Trainingpeaks.com (free plug) I can track quite easy. My ATP had 377 for the year but Appendicitis, food poisoning, and living with three little germ breeding monkeys made me come up a little short. However! That is more then I've exercised in more then 7 years combined! So positivity here is welcome and appreciated!
My diet leaves somethings to be desired but I've lost 30 lbs this year and have kept it off. I feel better then I ever have really since I married Summer. At that time I was in the best shape of my life.
So progress. It's a good thing. I recognize it, I appreciate it, and I'm grateful for it.
We're going to be welcoming a new little spirit into our home soon. I pray the birth of our daughter goes off without a hitch. We'll have four now. A lot of responsibility but a lot of fun too. Sometime after the New Year we should meet her!
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My Tri season is winding down. Summer is pregnant with our fourth child and is due in late January 2011. I'm training with a run focus to complete a half marathon on Jan 1st or so.
I ran my numbers for the year and also all my numbers since I started to train for endurance events in September 2009. The stats were very illuminating! More to come.
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Florida Challenge Olympic Triathlon
September 12, 2010
It’s been a few weeks since I raced my first Olympic Distance Triathlon. 2010 has been a great year for me with my weight loss and my health in general. But the Florida Challenge would definitely live up to its name.
I picked this race because it was in my neck of the woods and it was during the right time for me with my training. I gave myself a good year to get into the kind of shape where I could complete the race and not die or pass out.
I planned to complete around 350 hours for the year. This is low for an Olympic and mid range for a Sprint distance season from what I have found on the interwebs.
Two weeks before the race, my family and I went to Washington D.C. to visit the sights and the awesome Smithsonian Museumsdf. The trip was great but on the way back we all caught a serious case of food poisoning. It was horrible. I have never been so sick. Eight hours of constant vomiting and diarrhea. Not fun. I don’t think I ever really recovered from that food poisoning when race day came. I realize now I was dehydrated and sick.
I picked up my packet early so I didn’t need to be there super early for transition. I set up my stuff and went to the swim start. Summers brought the kids with her and bless her she is 5 months pregnant and they weren’t great for her at all. The swim start was delayed because the Half-iron race started first and they needed to move the buoys in from 1.2 miles to the .93 miles. A lot of the spectators were saying that the half-iron swim was long. The best female was at 35 minutes or so. They brought the buoys in but it seemed it was still longer than normal. The swim started, we were to swim in a weird square counter-clockwise. I positioned myself to the far right of the start to stay clear of the fast swimmers. We started and it was alright at first, the water was warm and the visibility wasn’t great but it was a lake so I expected that. I got a little panicky after 5 minutes or so. The swim seemed so slow. I was swimming at my race pace I thought, 2:15 per 100 or so but it took forever to get to the first buoy. I settled in and didn’t really have a problem sighting since the buoys were nice and large. For some reason Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody came into my mind so that helped me get through the swim. Turns out I was like 4 or 5 to last. At the end a black guy in a TYR speed suit passed me doing a breast stroke which was disheartening. The swim took 53:25 or so. Now if do the math that means 3:14 per 100 pace for the 1500 meter swim. I don’t think I can swim that slow freestyle if I tried, maybe breast stroke or back stroke but not that slow. I think the swim was .25 mile long. Which meant the swim the half-iron was long too, I was proud of myself I finished it. The swim always makes me apprehensive before the race.
Transition 1 went fine. Ran in got my bike shoes, helmet, socks on and headed out. 24.85 miles awaited me. A really big hill was immediately after the exit and I was in a big gear so that sucked. Not a great start to the bike. And it would get worse. I had a bagel with peanut butter and oatmeal for breakfast on race day. Pretty soon on the bike I started to burp up the peanut butter and bagel. Not good. I started to drink to try and hydrate, but the drinks were orange Accelerade with Crystal light extra flavoring. I usually do fine with that mixture but that day it was undrinkable. I drank about half a bottle on the bike but couldn’t drink anymore it was too sweet. All I had besides the drinks was GU gels which were gross too. So I was unable to feed or hydrate and my stomach was not cooperating with severe stomach cramps. My head got super heavy and I almost passed out on the bike a couple of times. I got to the last turn around and got a fresh bottle of water. I dumped most of it on my head and it felt so good! That helped, but only temporarily. About five miles from the Transition I started having worse cramps and I knew I needed a porta potty ASAP. Of course none were found on the bike. So I had to settle for a big oak tree off the road. Hopefully no one saw me but I couldn’t help myself, I was very sick. I got back on the bike and tried to make it to the bike finish. The hills of Clermont were no joke. It was 95 degrees and the heat index was 121 degrees. I almost quit on the bike. My head was hard to keep up and I felt nauseous and gross after the side of the road incident. But I made it in. I went to transition and thought about quitting so more. I was really close to calling it a day but I noticed that my heart rate wasn’t skyrocketing or super high. It was high but not so much that I needed to quit. So I decided to coat myself in some more sun screen and head out on the run which would be walk.
For the run/walk, I decided I would walk for at least the first two miles. Maybe for the last four I would feel better. But the first two miles had me contemplating quitting still even after the T1 revelation. But I made it to the first aid station and dunked my head in cold water, drank a little coke, drank a lot of water, and starting taking Endurolytes, which are electrolytes in pill form. Those I think would save my day. I started this routine with each aid station. It got me through. I finished in 5:15 or so dead last for the Olympic distance. In fact on the results they didn’t have my run time so maybe they closed the race and didn’t realize? I don’t care really I finished it and met one of my goals for the year.
Things I learned…
-do more bricks! I don’t think I was ready for the Oly distance switchover from swim to bike and bike to run. I did some bricks but with short bikes after swims or short runs after bikes.
-ride the race course earlier or close to the race course. Clermont is not Florida. Florida is flat and Clermont is NOT! Over 3k of climbing on a 25 mile course, I was not prepared for that.
-food poisoning is serious business and it kicked my butt and altered my race. Don’t know what I could have done with that.
-change my nutrition for Oly or longer races. My nutrition sucked and didn’t help my weakened condition on race day.
But overall I’m happy with it in perspective. It didn’t go my way or anywhere near where I’d hoped. Especially since I hoped to finish in 3:30 or so and I ended up at 5:15.
I didn’t quit and I finished so I’m satisfied. Two weeks later I’m thinking that although I finished I hurt myself more by keeping going. I lost a lot of fitness. My bike and run splits are down, down to what they used to be. I guess I am recovering but man it sucks.
Next year, a half-ironman distance race!
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Heartland Sprint Triathlon-Sebring FL June 20, 2010
I didn’t realize at first that this was father’s day! For many months I had planned for this race and didn’t realize that it would fall not only on father’s day but my second son Jacob’s 7th birthday. We celebrated Jakey’s birthday on Friday. And I celebrated father’s day way early with a new iPad several weeks before. So I had that going for me which was nice.
I made a reservation for the Residence Inn in Sebring. We drove down in the early evening. I was originally going to go by myself but I convinced Summer into bringing the kids since it was Father’s day and all. So we set off and got there around 8:30 pm. Luckily, the race allowed race morning packet pick up so we didn’t have to rush. I took a couple of Advil PMs and went to bed early to get up at 6 am for the race!
I got up and hit snooze on my iPhone several times, making me late. The hotel was only a couple of miles from transition. So I decided to go get signed in, set up transition and then come back and pick up the kids and Summy. Well that didn’t work out. I got there got my chip, and transition set up, and had a whooping 15 minutes to spare before the first swim wave took off. I called Summer and explained the situation and she wasn’t too disappointed. Since we find out we’re expecting our 4th child, she has had serious problems with morning sickness and nausea. So running around downtown Sebring stuck for the whole 2 hour race was probably not her most exciting idea. So I was on my own. Ironic I thought since I was expecting to do rice by myself anyway!
I made my way to the swim down the hill. The swim was in Lake Jackson, once out of the lake we had to run up a hill through sand to the transition area. I waded out to the swim start. It was very shallow for awhile and I had a chance to swim a little bit to warm up. I had a yellow cap so that meant I was the in the fourth wave. Each wave started four minutes apart with the start at 7:30 am. So I meandered over to the swim start. It was .25 mile square, that started and finished about 50 yards out in the water so I would have a little jog up the hill to the bike portion.
I went to the far right of the start since I didn’t want a mash up for the start. I knew I would swim a little bit farther but I didn’t want to get hit too much. The swim went great except I didn’t start my watch at the beginning so I don’t know what my true swim was since the race time is off due to all the running in from the water and beach to the timing mat. I didn’t go really fast, the race said 2:45 every 100 yards so it was 440 yards so the race way 12 minutes or so.
The T1 time was five minutes and most of that was getting sand off my feet. I hate the sand. I would go to the beach more often if it wasn’t for the sand! T1 took almost 6 minutes but again most of that was running to T1. I took off on the bike without much trouble and headed out.
The bike was a lap around Lake Jackson with some machinations at the end into some orange groves and then back into transition. I was ready to hammer and pound away in the big ring since it was race day and I had done SO much zone 2 little ring training sessions. My bike was tuned up and ready and no longer had the annoying click from a loose bottom bracket. I felt great on the bike. Things were coming smoothly and I was passing people. Pretty soon I realized I was over 21 mph for the first few miles. I didn’t stay in aero as much as I wanted. My HR was around 160 bpm for the whole bike ride and my mph was 18.4! A new PR for sure; one of my goals for this season was to average 17 mph for the whole bike leg in a race. I didn’t care if it was a super sprint, or the Olympic. But I did it! Feels great.
T2 went by in just a couple of minutes. Ran in dumped the bike switched shoes, put on my hat, ditched the iPhone and took off. The first mile was absolute torture! I was with some middle aged women who were complaining the whole time. One lady kept saying, “see you at the finish” as you passed her walking then she would start to run and pass you! And on it went over and over with several different people. She was annoying. Eventually she stopped running and started walking I guess since I never saw her again. The run was around downtown Sebring and then they ran us right by the finish, and back around to the finish line. I walked the aid stations at every mile. I ran the rest of the way except for a minute or two in a grass section after mile 1. It was really a gulch by the railroad tracks. I hate grass! I ran the rest of the way in and passed some more walkers, but more runners passed me. I even saw one girl who was doing the race as a relay walking! She was so skinny and walking a 5k. Here I am 300+ and running most of the way after doing the whole race. She still beat me. I made the final turn and sprinted through the finish. The 5k was done in 40:25. The time at the finish line was 1:59:30, but I knew since I was in the 4th wave it was quicker than that.
My goal for the race was 1:55 or faster, and I ended doing the race in 1:48 or so and with a new PR in the bike leg and run leg. The bike leg was 2 mph faster than ever before and the 5k was 15 seconds faster. The swim sucks at this point. I haven’t put as much time into as I’d like simply because it’s a hassle to get to the pool and work around pool schedules. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting slower with my swimming.
The rest though is going great. I am definitely in favor of zone 2 training for a base.
Next up is the Florida Challenge Olympic Distance in September which will be hilly and hot. But it’s my A race and I hope to be under 300 lbs for that race. That would be awesome!
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