In 2007, when leading up to IM Moo, in early March, I was up to about 10 hour training weeks with about 5000 yards of swimming, about 80-100 miles of riding, and 20-25 miles of running in any given week.
In the past 4 weeks with my new coach, I have surpassed 10,000 yards every week in the pool with the last week at 10,600; I have run 30, 35, 38, and 39 miles per week; and I have biked ~90-100 miles each week, but also done a significant amount of cycling-specific strength work on top of that. We'll see how the biking evolves, but so far in late February / early March, my total training time per week for the last 3 weeks has been 15:18, 14:42, and 15:36. In 2007, I had one week in April >15 hours because of an early season century ride, but otherwise didn't get up over 15 hours until June!! I've done 3 weeks in a row of ~15 hours and it's only March 8th! Definitely more volume. So far, my body has been responding well. I have been stretching more and trying to get around 7-8 hours of sleep a night, which I think is key.
Having said all that, I still think I have a long way to go to reach my rather lofty long term goals...
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
A New Ride
Well, it's been a couple of weeks now and I'm settling in on the new ride! In keeping with my pattern this year of sparing no expense (not necessarily a good thing), I went for the 2008 Felt DA. It just felt too good to pass up and Joe got a pretty good deal on the '08 DA, so the 2009 B2 was only $200 less - that made the choice easier. I also went for a pair of 808s, so I am all set for the next several years (or decades)! Here are a couple of shots of it.
The more aggressive position actually feels pretty good. I did 3 hours on it yesterday and spent some time in the aero bars and the hardest part is my neck. It was a great workout - ~3300 feet of vertical over 56 miles and I averaged 18.4 mph and 202 watts. Then I hopped off the bike and did a 6.7 mile run averaging 7 minute miles with ~500 feet of hills on the run. Not bad! Based on how I'm feeling so far, I think if I did the Vineman half course now, I could break my PR by quite a bit, maybe even 15-20 minutes. My running off the bike seems to have improved and my swimming is WAY better, so now I just need to convert all the power/weight workouts I've been doing in the off-season into some sustained bike speed. I am really looking forward to fewer walking lunges and step-ups and more time on the road!
The more aggressive position actually feels pretty good. I did 3 hours on it yesterday and spent some time in the aero bars and the hardest part is my neck. It was a great workout - ~3300 feet of vertical over 56 miles and I averaged 18.4 mph and 202 watts. Then I hopped off the bike and did a 6.7 mile run averaging 7 minute miles with ~500 feet of hills on the run. Not bad! Based on how I'm feeling so far, I think if I did the Vineman half course now, I could break my PR by quite a bit, maybe even 15-20 minutes. My running off the bike seems to have improved and my swimming is WAY better, so now I just need to convert all the power/weight workouts I've been doing in the off-season into some sustained bike speed. I am really looking forward to fewer walking lunges and step-ups and more time on the road!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Consistency
A very short update...
I've been pretty consistent with training for the last several months typically averaging around 11-12 hours a week. About 4 of that has been swimming, about 4-5 cycling, and the rest is running and weights. More swimming than I have ever done before with a few weeks up over the 10,000 yard mark. I've been trying to hit that consistently, but it's tough.
Last week I did my first 15 hour week. I'd have to look it up, but I don't think I did any 15 hour weeks at all last year while training for a half. That might've been the peak. While training for IMWi in '07, I crossed over 20 hours twice I think, but I was not nearly this consistent in the early months. I've been doing >10 hour weeks for quite a while now. I hope it pays off!
I've been pretty consistent with training for the last several months typically averaging around 11-12 hours a week. About 4 of that has been swimming, about 4-5 cycling, and the rest is running and weights. More swimming than I have ever done before with a few weeks up over the 10,000 yard mark. I've been trying to hit that consistently, but it's tough.
Last week I did my first 15 hour week. I'd have to look it up, but I don't think I did any 15 hour weeks at all last year while training for a half. That might've been the peak. While training for IMWi in '07, I crossed over 20 hours twice I think, but I was not nearly this consistent in the early months. I've been doing >10 hour weeks for quite a while now. I hope it pays off!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Chipping Away
I keep chipping away at the swim times. Last week I had another mini-breakthrough where I cut down another 3 or so seconds per 100. This time, it came from a better feel for the timing of the reach/pull. I have been doing drills for that for months now, but last week, I got the feel of how the body-roll connects to the pull and how that generates power. It's difficult to describe, but before I feel like my arms were initiating my pull and last week I was focusing on my body roll initiating my pull. I also felt like my pull was starting earlier, which was also making a difference.
I had one set last week where I did my 200 warm-up, then my 800 drills. Then for my 3x200 on 3:35, I was hitting 3:05-3:07, which made the set pretty easy. Then, for the 5x100 on 1:45, I did 1:29, 1:29, 1:29, 1:28, and 1:28. Bizarre. I had never done a 100 faster than 1:30 in my life, let alone 5 of them in a row. Then, on Friday, I did a timed 200 and did it in 2:54. That's 30 seconds faster than my baseline back in September when I did it in 3:24. 30 seconds out of 200 yards is huge. That's a minute every 400 yards. It's 15% faster. I think there is still more room to improve, but even if I level off here and simply build the endurance to keep a good pace for a longer time, I will be quite happy.
I had one set last week where I did my 200 warm-up, then my 800 drills. Then for my 3x200 on 3:35, I was hitting 3:05-3:07, which made the set pretty easy. Then, for the 5x100 on 1:45, I did 1:29, 1:29, 1:29, 1:28, and 1:28. Bizarre. I had never done a 100 faster than 1:30 in my life, let alone 5 of them in a row. Then, on Friday, I did a timed 200 and did it in 2:54. That's 30 seconds faster than my baseline back in September when I did it in 3:24. 30 seconds out of 200 yards is huge. That's a minute every 400 yards. It's 15% faster. I think there is still more room to improve, but even if I level off here and simply build the endurance to keep a good pace for a longer time, I will be quite happy.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Race Report - Carlsbad Half Marathon
I went into this race not knowing really what to expect. My PR for the distance is about 1:26 and change, but that was on a downhill course. Last year on a relatively flat course, I did a 1:28 and change on not a lot of run training. This offseason, I've been riding PowerCranks, which supposedly help your running (http://www.powercranks.com/assets/movies/aRunning%20testimonialsdialup.mov), but otherwise, my focus has definitely been swimming and bike power/strength. I've done some higher intensity in the last couple weeks, but not a lot. So all things considered, I wasn't sure how I'd do. My plan was to do the first 3-5 miles at like 6:30 pace to see how I feel and give my self a shot at a PR.
I was a little frantic in the morning because traffic was a little worse than I expected. I also missed out on the last port-o-potty visit, but so it goes. I had also forgotten my race belt, so I had to swing by and get pins before the start. I found some and made my way to the front of the start line for wave 1 with about 5 minutes to spare. No time to warm up. Oh well. The horn blew and I was off. The course was basically an out and back along the coast highway with a few miles from the start at the mall to the ocean and back. It's billed as a flat course, but there are some rollers. Nothing killer, but I wouldn't classify it as flat, either. I made it through the first 2 miles in around 12:30 or so and was feeling pretty good, so I kept at that pace as best I could. After about 5 miles, I was still feeling pretty good and was maintaining my target pace pretty easily with my HR in the low 160s, so I decided to go for it. I upped it a bit as I headed for the turnaround. For miles 2-7 or so, I was trying to stay with this guy in a blue tank top who was really cruising and hung with him for a while. I got to about mile 8 and these two other guys came up behind me and the blue guy went with them as they passed. I probably could've stayed with them, but with 5 miles to go still I didn't want to completely blow up, so I continued along at my pace and focused in on another guy in red. I stayed with that guy all the way. We came back through Carlsbad village and with about 2 miles to go he picked it up a notch so I responded. Then with a mile to go he went even harder and I did my best to stay with him. I was really fatigued over the last 2 to 3 miles and I was definitely feeling the big effort, but I still had something left. So I hit the 13 mile marker and then headed hard around the corner to the finish. He kind of slowed up to wait for a different guy so I took advantage and sprinted to the end and just barely beat him. It's always fun to go hard at the end - that's me trying to stay with those two guys ;-)
Overall, it was a great race. I will probably have a couple of days recovery and that will affect my training for this week, but it was worth it. I cut 4.5 minutes off my time from March of last year and I think I can go down another minute or two by March of this year. My splits were also amazingly consistent, which I was really happy with:
Mile 1 - 6:39 HR 157 (some uphill to go over the freeway)
Mile 2 - 5:39 HR 160 (some downhill, but no idea what happened here!!)
Mile 3 - 6:31 HR 146 (huh?)
Mile 4 - 6:19 HR 163
Mile 5 - 6:32 HR 166
Mile 6/7 - 13:01 HR 166 (missed the mile 6 marker)
Mile 8 - 6:29 HR 165
Mile 9 - 6:30 HR 164
Mile 10 - 6:29 HR 166
Mile 11 - 6:29 HR 167
Mile 12 - 6:38 HR 167 (missed the lap by a few seconds because I grabbed some water)
Mile 13 - 6:05 HR 166
Last 0.1 - 0:42 HR 174
I was pretty happy with all of those 6:29s and 6:30s in a row. Very consistent when I needed to stay focused and on pace.
Overall, this was an excellent race. A very fast field, too. The winner did a 1:02!! My 1:23:58 time was good for 81st out of over 7000 runners and 20th out of 469 in my age group. That time at Shamrock'n would've been good for 13th overall so that gives an idea of the quality of the field. It also had some tri pros - Joanna Zeiger finished 5th in the Women's race!
A great day, a great race, and I'm looking forward to the next event!
I was a little frantic in the morning because traffic was a little worse than I expected. I also missed out on the last port-o-potty visit, but so it goes. I had also forgotten my race belt, so I had to swing by and get pins before the start. I found some and made my way to the front of the start line for wave 1 with about 5 minutes to spare. No time to warm up. Oh well. The horn blew and I was off. The course was basically an out and back along the coast highway with a few miles from the start at the mall to the ocean and back. It's billed as a flat course, but there are some rollers. Nothing killer, but I wouldn't classify it as flat, either. I made it through the first 2 miles in around 12:30 or so and was feeling pretty good, so I kept at that pace as best I could. After about 5 miles, I was still feeling pretty good and was maintaining my target pace pretty easily with my HR in the low 160s, so I decided to go for it. I upped it a bit as I headed for the turnaround. For miles 2-7 or so, I was trying to stay with this guy in a blue tank top who was really cruising and hung with him for a while. I got to about mile 8 and these two other guys came up behind me and the blue guy went with them as they passed. I probably could've stayed with them, but with 5 miles to go still I didn't want to completely blow up, so I continued along at my pace and focused in on another guy in red. I stayed with that guy all the way. We came back through Carlsbad village and with about 2 miles to go he picked it up a notch so I responded. Then with a mile to go he went even harder and I did my best to stay with him. I was really fatigued over the last 2 to 3 miles and I was definitely feeling the big effort, but I still had something left. So I hit the 13 mile marker and then headed hard around the corner to the finish. He kind of slowed up to wait for a different guy so I took advantage and sprinted to the end and just barely beat him. It's always fun to go hard at the end - that's me trying to stay with those two guys ;-)
Overall, it was a great race. I will probably have a couple of days recovery and that will affect my training for this week, but it was worth it. I cut 4.5 minutes off my time from March of last year and I think I can go down another minute or two by March of this year. My splits were also amazingly consistent, which I was really happy with:
Mile 1 - 6:39 HR 157 (some uphill to go over the freeway)
Mile 2 - 5:39 HR 160 (some downhill, but no idea what happened here!!)
Mile 3 - 6:31 HR 146 (huh?)
Mile 4 - 6:19 HR 163
Mile 5 - 6:32 HR 166
Mile 6/7 - 13:01 HR 166 (missed the mile 6 marker)
Mile 8 - 6:29 HR 165
Mile 9 - 6:30 HR 164
Mile 10 - 6:29 HR 166
Mile 11 - 6:29 HR 167
Mile 12 - 6:38 HR 167 (missed the lap by a few seconds because I grabbed some water)
Mile 13 - 6:05 HR 166
Last 0.1 - 0:42 HR 174
I was pretty happy with all of those 6:29s and 6:30s in a row. Very consistent when I needed to stay focused and on pace.
Overall, this was an excellent race. A very fast field, too. The winner did a 1:02!! My 1:23:58 time was good for 81st out of over 7000 runners and 20th out of 469 in my age group. That time at Shamrock'n would've been good for 13th overall so that gives an idea of the quality of the field. It also had some tri pros - Joanna Zeiger finished 5th in the Women's race!
A great day, a great race, and I'm looking forward to the next event!
Monday, January 19, 2009
Some days...
... are just good training days. I'm not sure exactly why, but this past Sunday, I did my prescribed 3 hour ride followed by my 30 minute run. The ride had some power intervals in my biggest gear followed by the remainder at a moderate pace. I did the intervals and then proceeded down the bike trail cruising along at around 200-230 watts. I ended up averaging 217 watts for the ride and 218 over the last hour. 2 weeks ago on the PowerCranks for a 3 hour ride, I dropped down to a 154 watt average for the last hour. I was much stronger this time around! My hip flexors crapped out last time at around 2:15 into the ride. I did well all the way until about 10 minutes to go this past weekend. Then, for the run, I pushed it a bit and did the entire thing at sub 7-minute mile pace. I was doing around 6:45 or 6:50 pace for the whole thing and my HR was in the 150s and never crossed over 160 for the run. Pretty aerobic for me. All in all, it was a beautiful day and a great workout. Days like that really make this hobby fun!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
New progress in a new year
I've been slacking lately for these posts, so I thought I would catch up real quick...
Swimming:
I got in a couple of good weeks for the last 2 weeks at around 10K yds each. Even over our trip to see the in-laws in Illinois, there was a very nice Y I could swim at just literally down the street. When I got back, I did a timed 200 to compare to my original timed 200 when I started with coach. I did it in 3:00 flat, which is about a 12% improvement compared to my original 3:24. If I can improve my race splits by 12%, that will be huge. It's over 3 minutes faster at the half distance and I could possibly get the 2.4 mile swim down to around 1:10-1:15, which was my original goal. Over the long term, I'd like to get down to the 1:05 to 1:08 range, but so far so good on the swim front.
Biking:
I have been gradually building strength and endurance with combined spin/weight workouts and am feeling pretty good. Today, I had a test bike from Wheelworks for my 3 hour ride and I felt pretty good for the hill repeats and then the remainder of the ride. It did feel strange being on "regular" cranks again after 4 months, but I think I've gained a fair amount of power. The test bike was an incredibly sweet setup and now I'm just debating how much $$ I want to spend. See picture below.
I can get a really good deal on this '08 model, but I'm trying to decide if the extra money beyond the B12 or the B2 is worth it. Decision to come soon...
Running:
I had an excellent run this past Friday morning where I covered 10 miles in about 1:15 with big hills (it's kind of hard to run 10 miles around here without doing some pretty big hills). My foot was a little bit sore and tender afterward, so I will have to watch that, but it felt OK on my post-ride run today. I did 4.1 miles in about 0:29 minutes. I've been doing 25-30 mile weeks for the last several weeks, but the upcoming test will be the Carlsbad half-marathon in 2 weeks. I'm thinking about trying to PR it, but may just shoot for sub 1:30.
Swimming:
I got in a couple of good weeks for the last 2 weeks at around 10K yds each. Even over our trip to see the in-laws in Illinois, there was a very nice Y I could swim at just literally down the street. When I got back, I did a timed 200 to compare to my original timed 200 when I started with coach. I did it in 3:00 flat, which is about a 12% improvement compared to my original 3:24. If I can improve my race splits by 12%, that will be huge. It's over 3 minutes faster at the half distance and I could possibly get the 2.4 mile swim down to around 1:10-1:15, which was my original goal. Over the long term, I'd like to get down to the 1:05 to 1:08 range, but so far so good on the swim front.
Biking:
I have been gradually building strength and endurance with combined spin/weight workouts and am feeling pretty good. Today, I had a test bike from Wheelworks for my 3 hour ride and I felt pretty good for the hill repeats and then the remainder of the ride. It did feel strange being on "regular" cranks again after 4 months, but I think I've gained a fair amount of power. The test bike was an incredibly sweet setup and now I'm just debating how much $$ I want to spend. See picture below.
I can get a really good deal on this '08 model, but I'm trying to decide if the extra money beyond the B12 or the B2 is worth it. Decision to come soon...Running:
I had an excellent run this past Friday morning where I covered 10 miles in about 1:15 with big hills (it's kind of hard to run 10 miles around here without doing some pretty big hills). My foot was a little bit sore and tender afterward, so I will have to watch that, but it felt OK on my post-ride run today. I did 4.1 miles in about 0:29 minutes. I've been doing 25-30 mile weeks for the last several weeks, but the upcoming test will be the Carlsbad half-marathon in 2 weeks. I'm thinking about trying to PR it, but may just shoot for sub 1:30.
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