Week 4

There'll be a race report coming soon, as week 4 of my training plan was rounded off by the Atomic Man duathlon, where I surpassed my expectations and placed 8th overall!

Anyway, the week in summary...
Swim: Good session on Monday with just under an hour in the pool. I got 2500yds in, and it was a good quality workout. Swam again on Saturday, when I got another good 2000yds.

Bike: This was a mixed week for the bike. I know I haven't been emphasizing the bike enough in my training yet, but I've been building up my running base as I really neglected that until really late last year. As usual, I rode the bike to and from work every day. On average I'd say that's about 20-25 minutes each day. On Tuesday I had a nice half-hour ride at lunch. That almost made up for the guy who nearly ran me over on my ride into work.
On Wednesday I made the mistake of taking a spur-of-the-moment MTB ride with a colleague. He's a phenom on the mountain bike and I am, well, not. Long story short: I crashed. Moving from hard singletrack with pebbles embedded in the dirt, to 2in deep pebbles is probably okay if your tyre pressure is lower than 45psi (I was pumped up for the commute) and if you're expecting the surface change. Anyway, it's now Sunday and the "fresh hamburger" look on my right side is fading.
On Thursday I took the road bike to work again, only to see the winds get up to about 40mph, gusting 55. I took the long way home so I could ride through a fairly sheltered canyon. Saturday I rode the MTB to 4.5 miles to packet pickup for the race, and back, thankfully event free.

Run: Wednesday was my weekly trail run with the Triatomics triathlon club. We did 55 minutes, but I'm not sure of the distance. It was monstrously hilly though! Then my next run was Sunday, in the race.

Race: 10km run, 40km bike, 5km run.The bike course featured an 1100ft climb (among other climbs), but the runs were mercifully not so hilly. A race report will follow, but the short review: great day, nice weather, good people, 8th overall. I was hoping to get close to 2hr30 and ended up with a 2hr25min.

Two things I learned from the race:
a) My training is on the right track.
b) I need to get more run endurance (my long runs have been too short)
The rest of my learning experience will have to come when I do the race report.

Until then, have fun and enjoy whatever you're training for!

Weeks 2 and 3

Well, there have been disasters and some successes. It's been a long couple of weeks...

To start with, the day after my last post I went out for a brick with the local tri club. I was supposed to lead the brick, and it was lucky that I'd invited a friend as it was just the two of us waiting as 10am rolled by (Omen #1). So 16 relatively easy miles on the bike, then we put running shoes on and set out for a 3.5 mile run. Of course, I took a wrong turn (Omen #2) and we ended up running an extra quarter mile...
Then I put my bike back on the car and headed for our local co-op market for some lunch, where I noticed that my car had been damaged: someone must have pulled away around the front of my car and scraped the driver-side corner. They would have to have noticed, so to just drive off is pretty much the height of dickishness. Disaster number 2 struck when I got home, still fuming about the damage to my car and forgot my bike was on the roof. :-( Yes, I have a carport. I was going very slowly and stopped quickly, but too late: the race bike has two small tears in the carbon on the seat-stays. Frame = dead.

All that and the vision in my left eye has been getting steadily worse over the last couple of weeks. I'm down to 20/200 on that eye, thankfully reading better than 20/25 on the right. It may well be time for more cataract surgery...

So how has the training gone? Better than everything else!
Without my fancy carbon steed I have been riding my '94 steel Eddy Merckx race bike. It's heavy by comparison, but it's still a nice bike. I even took it out on a hilly 30 mile ride in winds that started around 20mph and got up to 40ish mph. That was... The. Hardest. Ride. Ever. This week has blasted the legs too, but I've done 7hr45min of training, plus my daily bike commute, and I actually feel good.

Anyway, without taking up too much space here, suffice to say that my training plan is pretty well on track. I need to just keep working to the plan and all will be well. My first race of the season is next Sunday, and my replacement bike has arrived - hopefully the insurance company will pay for some of it, but if not then I'll have to take it as an expensive lesson in paying attention.

Still, better to get the stupidity and other disastrous happenings out of the way early in the year, instead of having them stack up just before Ironman Wales.

Week 1

Nearing the end of week one of my training plan and I can't say that it went all that well. There's plenty good to take away though. The week in review:

• Last weekend was my intensive freestyle clinic. Wow! Lois Daigneault is an awesome coach. And 12 hours at the pool, 7.5 in the water... is intense. I've learned a million things but am picking two main points to work on. Bring on free speed!
• My shoulders were fried on Monday, and I'd been cultivating a nasty sore throat since Thursday, so I rested. Rode to work, got a lift home as there was a fair bit of snow.
• Tuesday was a near write-off, just a 45min unstructured swim session. Saw the rheumatologist in the morning, so I drove to work. My blood-work looks good though. I'm going to be watching this carefully to also monitor physiological changes from my Ironman training.
• Wednesday afternoon I had an implant in my right eye to bring my macular edema back under control, so no swimming until next week. Evening workout was supposed to be an easy trail run, but I missed the group and went for a frustrated road run: 5.5mi (avg pace 7:18) and somehow I kept increasing speed all the way through the run. It's looking like a good run season, but I need to scale back the speed and run longer.
• Thursday and Friday were fairly useless training days. I did my bike commutes, and that's it. Except that on Friday I signed up for Ironman 70.3 Boulder. Hurrah!
• Today (Saturday) I went for a super-slow 30 mile ride with a friend. Felt good to get moving again, and I can see much better from my right eye. The left is a worry though - the cataract is getting worse so I may have to have surgery again soon.

Then tomorrow is a "no-drop" group brick (bike-run), where I'm supposed to be leading the thing. So it'll be a fairly easy pace 16mi ride, then a 3.5mi run. The cold/sore throat is starting to feel a bit better, so next week I'll try to get back on track with the training (and treatment - when illness strikes I have to stop the immuno-suppressants).

Happy training (and Easter)!